Last Thursday, I desperately rushed into the computer lab in the basement of the Union to print off a last-minute assignment. There, I found the floor completely covered in water. The pipes had sprung a leak, and I can only assume that the nearby bathrooms, blocked off with yellow caution tape, had something to do with the same problem. When I returned to my dorm later that night, after swiping myself in without being asked for my G00 number, I learned that a tile in one of the study lounges in my building had disintegrated. As a result, the lounge was covered in rainwater.
Does it seem to anyone else that there are more problems than solutions on the Geneseo campus? Yes, they are renovating the Union patio, building a new residence hall and doing all sorts of other construction work that most people can't identify. But should we be building a new residence hall when Erie is entering its third year of renovation and damage to the roof of Letchworth Dining Hall just closed it down for over a week? Is right now the time to renovate the patio, which anyone can see is nowhere near completion, when existing buildings are springing leaks and construction work is already dominating so many areas of campus?
Work on the Geneseo campus has been spread too thin for any one project to exhibit progress or even hint at meeting a deadline. I have yet to see one construction zone that has had workers and movement every day of the week. The fact that meeting deadlines does not seem to matter to anyone is inconsiderate of the students who live among dust, noise and closed walkways. Whatever happened to finishing one project before starting another? We can't expect any singular endeavor to get accomplished because resources (manpower in particular) have been stretched so far that it is just a physical impossibility to finish everything in a timely manner.
It isn't just construction, either. All at once, Geneseo introduced the new card swipe system, myCourses, electronic billing and other technologies whose glitches are causing problems on campus. Students are having trouble accomplishing tasks in myCourses, and some residence halls are still fully accessible to anyone 24 hours a day as the G00 number requirement after 7:30 p.m. is not working.
In their passion to continue rising in the rankings of national colleges, Geneseo administrators have made a giant mess like that of a flighty child in a playroom full of toys. They are forgetting one important element: the students who already go here. We chose this school, whether for its academics, athletics or campus, and we pay to study, work and live here. We are not paying to suffer inconveniences such as a 20-minute walk to class that involves detouring around construction sites, failing quizzes because they won't work on myCourses, flooded buildings and a disregard for concrete completion dates. Before drawing up plans to renovate Bailey, tear down Jones, or whatever else has been cooked up recently to perpetuate the chaos, let's please see some finished products before we all have to start wearing hardhats to class.