Editorial: Stream is fucked. Let's use Tumblr instead

Freshers, welcome to the University of Tech Fuckups, formally known as Massey University. Renowned for its bugs, scam emails, and website crashes. What should be on your 2025 Bingo Card? The Massey Stream site will break many... many times. 

But in the spirit of a New Year, new Massey, I suggest the university scraps the whole Stream site. And instead, use Tumblr.  

Stream is where students go to manage their classes, hand in assignments, read material, contact lecturers, and probably more — but it's so hard to navigate I wouldn't know.  

If you actually manage to log in, you'll often find a note at the top of the site's page reading something like:  

Note: Stream will be down for repairs when your biggest assignment is due  

Note: Need to contact a lecturer? Well too bad cause Stream ain't gonna send it  

Note: Assignments handed in at 11:59pm won't upload until 12:14pm (soz not soz)  

With enrolments and funding declining left and right for Massey, it's no wonder their tech is constantly breaking. They've probably scrapped the IT team.  

The proof is in the pudding. Last month, the student portal pulled a major prank on students, emailing them that they failed to enroll for courses they were well and truly enrolled in.  

In June last year, the university was forced to turn off cheating monitoring after at least 150 student’s online supervised exams had gateway errors, microphone access error, and a JavaScript issue. Students even risked taking their test under another student’s name and ID.  

In May, students were accused of using AI in assignments, despite claiming they'd never used it (heavy on the 'claiming').  

And finally, in November 2023 the university was forced to reset all students’ account passwords after a phishing email redirected students to a fake website and requested their login details.    

But if the university were to use Tumblr, bliss would ensue. Teachers could create their own blogs for classes, and post reading resources, class times, and selfies all in the same place. How would students' hand in assignments? Just hit up the DMs.  

Or, to reverse the power dynamic, each student could create their own Tumblr blog and make all their teachers hit follow. Students could post their assignments to their blog, for their dedicated followers (lecturers) to see.   

And as Tumblr continues making a comeback this year, Freshers born in 2005 and 2006 (ew) need to experience the beauty of Tumblr.  

So come on Massey, don't rob Freshers of a cultural reset.  

Love, Sammy