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We hopped and skipped through the upper levels of Stein, being careful to avoid tripping over the homeless professors.
BROCKLESBY
THE FROSH
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It was suggested ... that a large red sign be placed north of Healy bearing the legend, ‘Future Site of Big-[Expletive] Building -- Your Tuition Dollars at Work’
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COMMENTS ON THE PASSING PARADE
College is Hall
By Michael J. Ballway
CRUSADER STAFF WRITER
I
t's over! It's over! It's over! That horrid anticipatory week, that last week of February, that week of midterms and papers and other horrid nasty things -- has ended. Just when you thought that the workload and routine of college life were becoming too much to bear, in like a knight in shining armor comes: Spring Break. Spring Break, the annual cleansing of body and soul immortalized by sophomoric MTV specials and travel agency ads. Spring Break, the week of rest and relaxation that recharges us Crusaders for the rest of the semester. Spring Break, a chance to relive old memories with High School buddies or make new ones with Southward-bound college chums. My pal Joey Brocklesby, the Carson Daly-obsessed aught-three from Hanselman, met up with me the other day in Stein. The kid was radiant. He was beaming. He was absolutely gushing with energy over the prospect of returning home to the green hills of Winooski. Your faithful correspondent is lukewarm about returning to his domicile (inconveniently located in one of those Midwestern metropolises on I-90), but he put on a smile and soaked up Joey's abundant enthusiasm. The two of us hopped and skipped through the upper levels of Stein, quite a spectacle to behold, being careful to avoid tripping over the homeless professors. Yes, homeless professors! Apparently, they are quite an issue recently. The overcrowding of faculty has become so much of a problem that even the administration has begun to take notice. Professors with office hours but no office lay about the corridors of Stein 4 and Fenwick 3, surrounded by large stacks of books with titles like "Imaginary Numbers (And Other Mathematicians' Defense Mechanisms)" and "Absolute Nero: Science of an Emperor." Sometimes they hold out filing trays, begging for term papers from the students who pass by. Often they have hand-lettered signs with messages such as "Will teach finer points of German grammar for food" or "Take my seminar -- please!" But what is being done for these profs without roofs, you ask? Construction, dear reader, construction! As was revealed to a relatively large (yet not-quite-quorum) crowd at the latest SGA meeting, the College is building a brand-new edifice just south of Fenwick -- to be named College Hall (this, of course, is tentative; rumor has it that Coca-Cola and FleetBoston Financial are in a heated bidding war over the final naming rights). After a mere $15 million of expense and 14 months of construction, Mt. St. James will boast a brand-new office building with new-concept lecture halls and work spaces -- plus coveted office space to accommodate the current glut of lecturers and instructors. Yet not all students are reacting favorably to the construction. Angry mobs of sophomores bearing pitchforks and torches stormed the Monday-night SGA meeting, demanding answers to questions that sit uneasily on their minds. Or perhaps it was one or two sophomore SGA reps. Something like that. In any event, demands were made that Dean Freeman answer probing questions relating to topics such as how traffic will be rerouted to deal with the fact that Linden Lane will be cut off by the construction (and, indeed, after construction, by FleetBoston Hall itself); how the construction will affect the Fenwick Hall building and the space between Fenwick and Healy in general; and how, indeed, the College will be paying for this large outlay. All logistical questions like these were either answered or deferred promptly, with the understanding that issues like driving routes and architecture styles -- which couldn't be answered at the moment -- were addressed in documents and plans available in the dean's office at Fenwick 115. One of the sophomores, the one holding the sharpest pitchfork (unless those were just my imagination), made the vocal point that it seemed strange that the College was foisting this large building upon an unsuspecting student body with very little advance warning. So far, there has been little attempt to directly contact us students and groundbreaking is set for Spring 2000. Spring, as in now. It was suggested that an email or letter be sent around to the student body saying that we would soon be constructing a "Big-[expletive] Building," or perhaps that a large red sign be placed north of Healy bearing the legend, "Future Site of Big-[expletive] Building -- Your Tuition Dollars at Work." The sentiment, if not the exact (unprintable) phrasing, seemed to be taken to heart by the Dean. Notwithstanding assorted misgivings on the part of the aught-twos, the FleetBoston Hall project appears to be heading forward full-steam, intent on providing much-needed space for our teachers and, as an added bonus, confusing the heck out of the RoadRunner Pizza drivers. Even if nothing else of value is gleaned from the construction, watching the deliverymen negotiate the Linden Lane closure should provide endless amusement for us when we return from vacation. Not that we'll need it; in a week, all of us stressed-out Men and Women for Others will be cool, collected, and ready to face the rest of the year with serenity, regardless of whether we made it onto MTV. And it couldn't come at a better time. As Joey Brocklesby said the other day, "Sophomores with pitchforks? I think this college needs Spring Break more than we know." This article ran, uncut, in the 3 March 2000 edition of The Crusader, on page 7 (second page of Opinions section). |