Aug
16
2012
MyAccess still thinks the USSR is a state
Posted by: Vanya Mehta in News, Vox Populi, tags: MyAccess, USSR
MyAccess, Georgetown’s website for class registration, appears to be a little nostalgic for the Cold War and Moscow’s former Communist Party-controlled state. In the “Personal Information” section of the registration , students still have the option to declare that their home residence is in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
As a university championing one of the best international relations schools in the country, with a required course devoted to learning every state in the world along with its capital and geographical location, it looks like our administration needs a little reminding that the USSR formally dissolved in 1991. Oops.
Screen capture by Paul Musgrave
Entries (RSS)
The USSR being listed isn’t the weirdest ‘country’ listed- trust me. There are about 15 or so completely uninhabited islands that are on that list- Bouvet Island, Ashmore and Cartier Islands, Canton and Enderbury Islands- and Johnson Atoll, a former nuclear weapons testing ground. And of course, who isn’t from the Iraq-Saudi Arabian Neutral Zone.
I always figured that some smart ass SFS work study kid- fresh off of his map class- decided to place his own private joke forever in the bowels of the university’s records system.
To be fair, I was BORN in the USSR, it just ceased to exist after a while. It seems that they’re recycling a menu from elsewhere.
[...] Cold war still living on at Georgetown University? [...]
It appears as though MyAccess has not been updated since its initial creation in 1983. If you look closely, you will be able to see the remains of the white-out someone tried to smear over “German Democratic Republic” and “Yugoslavia.”
Lots of people (especially those born in the Soviet Union, but who now have green cards) still have passports from the USSR, and thus have to list it as their home country for various official purposes.