| << Front page | Commentary | September 23, 2005 |
Haste makes hazard
Union St. housing is beautiful, spacious, modern and well-situated. The walls are color-coordinated, the rooms are huge and everything is new; the fans even come with remote-controls. It’s the perfect compromise between a college that desires to become more residential and a student body that desires more room to breathe.
But it isn’t ready. It’s not done. And it’s not safe.
Students living on Union St. are virtually living in a construction zone, and while the administration has advised to keep a safe distance during the day, the only alternative to walking through it on one’s way to class is to walk in the middle of the stop-signless road that leads from Union’s parking lot to Union St. This same parking lot is not adequately lit and its adjacent blue-light emergency phone is not yet operational as a source of light or communication, leaving students coming home after dark completely vulnerable.
Multiple entrance housing units are not equipped with ID swipe entrance or buzz-through systems, so that in order for guests to reach their apartment the front door must remain unlocked, exposing the interior stairwells to any passerby who feels like entering. None of the doors in any of the units have peep-holes, a standard safety feature present in all dorm-rooms on campus, which would allow residents to know who they open their doors to. Peep-holes are present in all dorm-rooms across campus. The list goes on, ranging from smoke detectors still in their manufacturing bags and flooded floors to such minor grievances as the abundance of mud and erratic hot-water faucets.
Res-Ed is in over its head overloaded with service requests and incapable of processing them in a timely manner. Despite this seeming incompetence, Res-Ed is not to blame for the predicament in which it finds itself. The department is still in the process of reorganization after its recent “regime change.” In this period of readjustment following major staff turnover and an increased clientele, Res-Ed cannot be expected to adequately cope with such myriad and unforeseen problems.
The problems were supposedly unforeseen because the housing units were scheduled for completion over a month ago, but were stalled in the construction process due to the unanticipated length of the winter season. For this, neither the College nor the contractors can be blamed, as they clearly did not request the snowfall, and who among us could have predicted a long winter in Oberlin?
All of this could have been avoided if the college hadn’t been in such a rush to get the new housing up this year. Upperclassmen could have had one more year with the freedom to live off campus while Union St. was polished, completed and made safe to live in. But with the college pushing its goal of a residential Oberlin to top priority, questions of practicality were set aside in favor of reaping the financial benefits of utilizing the housing as soon as possible. What we are left with is an administration so desperate to accomplish their goal of building a residential community that they’ve put student safety at risk.
Delays in construction should have been expected, Res-Ed should have been
adequately prepared by the administration, and the fate of those students
expected to dwell in unfinished buildings should have been weighed with greater
importance. With rumors of a senior lottery being implemented for off-campus
housing next year, it is difficult to imagine how the administration expects
Res-Ed to be able to accommodate.
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