Nobody should have to go to bed on campus worrying about the ceiling falling in on them during their sleep. Nobody should have to go to class wondering if ceiling tiles are going to spill water all over the floor during a lecture, and nobody should have to prepare to bring materials to catch falling pieces of the ceiling while they’re trying to learn.
Last week’s flooding in Lawrence Hall exacerbated these feelings and concerns. The efforts to repair the dorms after the flooding is commendable, and the quick action — with the help of outside contractors — to get displaced students back where they expect to be is appreciated.
But going to class and seeing water damage stains, pooling water on a ceiling tile in Academic Hall and almost everyone in the class wondering when this ceiling tile would inevitably burst after dripping water onto the floor should not be the norm considering tuition price.
Now, it’s understood that all the buildings Point Park occupies are not new. None of Point Park’s property was built after the 1940s and it is not easy to maintain old buildings. But is it impossible? No, it’s just expensive.
But to say it’s not possible to keep up with preventative building maintenance to make sure that water reservoirs don’t fail and roofs don’t allow water from outside into classrooms is also not true. These problems can be prevented and the money is there.
Considering the continuing efforts to uplift the athletics program here and to make the facilities more fitting for an NCAA university and not a NAIA university, lots of money is being spent to bring the athletic spaces on campus to a higher level. This is all fine and good and should be done — the athletics program deserves the recognition and to be uplifted.
However, thinking of how some classrooms look compared to the athletics spaces can be troubling. When these spaces in the Student Center look almost brand new and have hardly a spec of dust on them while some classrooms in Academic Hall look dingy and dilapidated, the contrast is troubling.
Because, while athletics is growing rapidly and has the chance to make the university some money, it’s important to remember why people even go to a university in the first place.
No matter the school, university does not exist just to have access to parties. It does not exist just to play sports and it does not exist just to expand one’s social network. Everything that happens is all under one goal: to learn.
And if the goal here is to learn something new or to fine-tune skills a student already has, how can one do that when classrooms are falling apart? These spaces are where students spend most of their time on campus no matter where they stand in clubs, athletics or even if they don’t do anything besides go back to their dorms or commute.
So if we spend all this time in classes, then why are they not taken care of? Housekeeping does what they can to keep them clean, but those efforts will go unnoticed if maintenance falls by the wayside and floors get flooded and dust from ceilings fall all over the place.
How can this happen? It’s simple: Physical Plant employees need more support to do the work they can, and this might look like more workers. Considering the number of buildings on campus and how few people Physical Plant has to dispatch to dorms, classrooms and other spaces, it would seem almost impossible to fix everything in a timely manner.
Granted, this is all from an outsider’s perspective. A journalist can only know so much about the maintenance process, and maybe things seem worse than they are. But again, when water damage happens right in front of students trying to learn, it’s hard to ignore. Let’s get our money’s worth here.
