Thursday, January 24, 2013

Syracuse University wastes students' money



The Italian campus of Syracuse University, one of the most prestigious universities in the US, is located in Florence in a beautiful villa facing a wonderful piazza. 

The problem is that it is wasting the money it receives from student tuition and donors that is meant to pay for the university educationof American students. 
And as we all all know, a good education in the US is a very expensive business that not everyone can afford. Many students take loans to pay for their education and it will take them years to pay it back.

The Florence campus has become part of the "Italian system", meaning that unqualified people get high-level jobs without having any qualification. Those people have indefinite contracts and cannot be fired, whatever they do, even though they are not actually qualified for any job..Syracuse University in Florence created a unique System.

The same people spend money on buying equipment that is not needed, without improving conditions for students. They receive salaries for not doing their job.  
Add to this the poor social skills of the current director who gets into fights with the staff(Ask staff.com), so that additional resources are needed to keep everyone calm.
A little Bird just told our sources that the Director leaked very high confidential information regarding the previous Director job that contains serious accusations.

An example? The current IT coordinator of the Florence campus is a former gardener, with absolutely no qualification or degrees (see pics of his work later)  and  he has no clue about computers, no need to add and say that he has no social skills. His wife, by the way, is responsible for health and safety on campus, with no education or background on the matter.While his sister is the receptionist without any proper knowledge of English (the campus has about 300-400 American students), so all day long she is playing online games or reading the journal.
The local bar license is with the family, as well as the  courtyard garden work.and so and so. 

One of the reasons for this situation? The wonderful building that hosts the Florence Campus came with the little condition that Syracuse University had also to hire the peasant family that used to work for the former owners, a noble family.

The result? The IT system is inefficient and unorganized. A water kettle is placed on top of very expensive equipment (health and safety!) Brand-new expensive hard-drives are thrown on the floor. 


Experts estimated the amount spent for unqualified salaries for these type of contracts as more than  400,000 US $ every year.

400,000 US $ of students loans and public money

More to add to all this, we know that the home campus sent an IT manager from the USA to supervise everything, since they realized that the current director and the so called IT coordinator are not performing, the first spend days promoting her book, and the other spends his days avoiding doing anything..


Well, see for yourself!


The Florence campus of Syracuse University: located in the beautiful "Villa Rosa” in piazza Savonarola.



From their website: The main campus of SUF is the Villa Rosa, which is centrally located at Piazza Savonarola. It houses classrooms, a lounge, computer facilities with wireless Internet, a caffĂ© bar, and a courtyard garden. The campus also houses the Villa Corsi, with its extensive English-language library of more than 11,000 volumes and a digital image collection. The SUF campus is a ten-minute walk from the historic city center, and is surrounded by a lovely residential neighborhood with a variety of local shops and businesses.

 "Italian system" mentioned before is best seen in the highlighted red words here.




And this is from the inside:



This is one of the "servers" configured for one of the departments -- no words to describe this. Remember, the responsible for this "piece of art" has flexible hours and cannot be fired! 




Such an unorganized place, expensive 2000$ LCD multimedia screens that are not in use! 



Apple computers covered with dust everywhere!





The basement is full of expensive devices thrown away, cables and expensive hard drives that cost thousands of dollars in every corner, server rooms in an incredible situation.

Funny that a member of the family (that cannot be fired as well) is responsible for health and safety on campus. Does this look safe to you?


     Oh, and they tried to fix it: Before




    And after 1 day















Note that the current IT coordinator has nothing to do with cleaning and trying to put things into order.He had been there for ages and is the responsible for the poor standards




The campus also pays for a full-time architect that is responsible for maintenance(Another question mark here). And an IT manager, and someone in charge of health and security...
That money is well spent! 




This is the door of the server room... Please notice the poor level of security. 







Are we in  2012....? At an American University??



State of Art Security 















Funny enough that everyone knows about it, yet no one wanted to change anything. 
In fact, they hired a competent IT manager at some point but he was dismissed after a short time, no one knows why.

 The gardener was certainly better qualified! 


The whole place is a mess and badly managed.





IT room ????



Is this Europe or Mali...?


Apple computers and printers rusting











The IT manager(or coordinator)gave the world this piece of IT art...







While a server cabinet is supposed to look like this...(this is NOT Syracuse University in Florence!)




Special 2000$ multimedia screens and servers covered with dust and dirt:



Each monitor is 2000 $!

 Each monitor is 2000 $!

and more apples rusting







But these  Each monitor is 2000 $!



And this is supposed to be a server? 






Server Room Door???


Wow..I want a contract like that as well,Get paid, and do Nothing..well done.





How to test an antenna?
its not a Riddle





I stood next to the IT responsible when he was asked to unplug the wireless antenna and test it and he did not now how to do it. How do  you test an antenna, he asked?

while the answer is easy:
You plug it somewhere else and test it you dummy



 maybe this image could explain why...


No one knows where he spends his time, but if someone got a problem help might be available only next day.



Update 10th February 2013

A strange contract was signed to rent the building for the Architecture department in Piazza Donatello shown here in these pics.
The amount paid monthly is more than 20,000 Euro for few rooms that are badly maintained and that are not worth it.

We all wonder who benefited from all this, and why does the Syracuse University allow such Hugh wasting of money, 
Allowing wasting additional 200,000 euro and more every year.

Pictures from this building can be seen where we commented on the Wireless antenna on the wall in this post.

Our sources inside campus said that everyone was shocked to hear about all this, but once again, nothing was done.








Look at this mess!



Nice job...


 Health and safety? no worries, its in the hands of the family (that cannot be fired!)



Cable Nation United


This is someone else's work (very obvious).



The basics are: no one cares










Similar pictures were quoted and posted by one of Syracuse University IT personal
who visited the local Italian campus ,you can find him online his name 
is lee Badman.


Bad management?

Incompetents?


Corruption?


Big waste of student and donor 

money?

One word:Shame


Time to Act,
 Syracuse University need to Investigate and Change.

Please feel free to comment.



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The Film- Syracuse Spending Students money

Stay tuned for more Pictures and facts.

Contact us: Suf.florence@gmail.com 


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