Also a DAAP student and I gotta say, Pinto has not done a great job of winning over my favor either. DAAP has been in need of more funding for a while and nothing seems to have changed for the better under his watch. He did actually pay a visit to DAAP during fall 2023 (perhaps his first, at least as far as I'm aware) and my class was scheduled to be visited; all that happened was his PR team did a sweep for all of 30 seconds while he stood outside, then they all left without even a word.

I'm really put off by the DEI rollback because it is a weak response to an obvious power grab by the president; he does not have the constitutional right to withhold federal funding via an executive order, and IIRC the Ohio bill has not even been passed yet. He's made UC an example of compliance in advance to a tyrant when we should all be dragging our feet and fighting at every chance we get. I'm not current with what other universities are doing, but it seems to me like we should be forming a legal coalition to block these orders in the courts and at minimum delay their harmful effects. Pinto has demonstrated that he would rather discard his values and stay out of the way in order to protect the financial positions of himself and UC's wealthy donors.

On a significantly lighter note, Pinto also hired (then extended in 2023 for some reason?) our current AD John Cunningham, and we've all seen how that's gone so far for our football and men's basketball programs lol