Instructions

Making updates

If you want to push changes directly to this repository, one of the @linguistics organization administrators will need to grant you access.

If you don't think you'll need to make changes very often, you can fork this repository and clone the fork to your local hard drive, or use GitHub to edit the file (in which case it will create a fork for you). After you've committed your changes to your fork, you will need to submit a pull request to this repository, which the GitHub web interface makes quite easy. This will notify the organization members, and one of them will be able to merge your changes.

Design modifications

1. Open map.sketch in Sketch
2. Make your changes
3. Save (optional)
4. Export to map.svg

Workstation modifications

1. Open people.tsv in a unicode-friendly editor. (Note from MHP: If possible, just use the github editor, to avoid encoding mixups.)
2. Make your changes, preserving the column headers and tab-separated format
3. Save with utf-8 encoding. You can ensure that it was saved correctly by running file people.tsv at the command line, which should return:

people.tsv: UTF-8 Unicode text

If it is returning ASCII instead, well, technically ASCII is a type of UTF-8, but the code won't accept that. The fix for this problem (drawn from this StackOverflow) is:

(printf "\357\273\277";cat INPUT.tsv) > OUTPUT.tsv

Rendering and Printing

1. Open https://linguistics.github.io/rlp/map.html in Chrome.
2. Print to PDF or a physical destination.
   • By default, Chrome should use a landscape layout and minimal margins.

Workstation Allotment Policy

1. Three or four weeks before the beginning of semester:
   • Call the set of current workstation residents (whether fellowship or not) incumbents
   • Ask administration for a list of all fellowship recipients, TAs, and AIs (and maybe GRAs); call this set privileged
   • Let itinerants = incumbents - privileged (students who may need to move out)
   • Let residents = incumbents ∩ privileged (these guys aren't going to move, and their workstations will not go up for grabs)
   • Let incoming = privileged - incumbents (students who will for sure get a workstation but we don't yet know where)
   • Let homeless = privileged' (the complement of privileged)
2. Send some emails:
   • Ask all of the homeless to apply for a workstation, if they want one.
   • There are currently 25 workstations total. Select the top 25 - |privileged| applicants, and call these winners.
   • Call the remainder of the applicants rejections, and inform them that they didn't make the cut.
   • Add winners ∩ itinerants to the residents, and let evictions = itinerants - winners (which may overlap with the rejections)
   • Ask the incoming which workstations they would like, from among the evictions (assuming that all workstations are currently occupied; if that's not the case, add the abandoned workstations to the evictions set)
   • If there are any winners - itinerants, let them choose among the workstations evictions - incoming
3. If possible, go back in time a couple months and send some more emails:
   • Inform evictions that they may need to vacate their workstations, especially if they are going to be gone for the summer.

See the examples in the emails directory for templates for these notifications.

Prioritization

As available, workstations will be assigned to the following groups of students / physical objects:

1. Fellowship recipients
2. Assistant Instructors
3. Teaching Assistants
4. Graduate Research Assistants
5. Best applicants
6. Worst applicants
7. Lingerers-on
8. Groupies
9. Pets
10. Prized possessions

Applications

The only prioritization step that's hard (requires some actual decision-making) is #5. Generally, preference will be given to students who:

1. Would use their workstation a lot
2. Are near the end of their degree program
3. Have good workstation prank ideas

E.g., Fall 2013 workstation application form had these fields:

• Full name
• Email address
  • Drop-down list of emails, to aid identification of student
• Need: On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you want a workstation?
  • Radio buttons from 1 to 10
• Alternatives: Do you already have a desk or assigned workspace elsewhere?
  • No
  • CILLA
  • Signed Languages Lab
  • Language Acquisition Lab
  • Phonetics Lab
  • German department
  • Spanish department
  • Other: ______________
• Time: How often do you think you would use your workstation?
  • < 1 day a week
  • 1 day a week
  • 2 days a week
  • 3 days a week
  • 4 days a week
  • 5+ days a week
• Cardinality: Which side would prefer?
  • West
  • East
• Rhetoric: Any parting remarks?