I began writing this post in what is likely to be my “office” for the next two years: the EMU Student Center. We will see what the arrangements are like in my real temporary office space in Hoyt, but as many of the characters in the Star Wars series were fond of saying, “I have a bad feeling about this.”
Packing has been going on in earnest for the last week or two, and my department (English Language and Literature) is scheduled to be moved out of the building and over to Hoyt on April 30. There was a final meeting about the big move last Friday where we were supposed to get “packets” to help label various things for journeys to various places, but those packets were not available. Still aren’t, and I’m not sure when they will be.
Of course, I am assuming that a) the moving plans are still more or less on schedule, and b) stuff actually goes from the right place in Pray-Harrold to the right place in temporary office place and/or storage. Needless to say, many of my colleagues have expressed some doubt regarding these assumptions.
As of last week, we still don’t quite know where some of our classes are going to be taught, particularly the classes we teach in my department that involve computer lab space. Hoyt, it turns out, does not have air-conditioning, which means that the spring/summer could be mighty hot and sweaty (and not in a good way). All the information we have about internet access in the dorm suggests that it is sloooooow, that there is no wifi, and that there are not enough drops in what will be the offices. In order to print a document from my office, I will have to make a journey from the eighth to the first floor. And this is the stuff we know about, folks. So the work conditions will be sketchy at best, grievance-worthy at worse.
Now personally, I am taking a rather selfish, “every person for themselves” approach to all this. I don’t use my office much in Pray-Harrold as it is, and I suspect I will use it even less next year. For the most part, the classes I teach that would involve a computer lab will be online next year. And the one thing that’s nice about being in Hoyt is that it’s a lot closer to the Student Center, a much more pleasant place to meet students and colleagues anyway.
Unfortunately, this approach won’t work for the staff and administrators who are expected to be in an office during normal business hours, and it won’t work for the colleagues I have who now see their offices as a place to work.
Like I said, a bad feeling.
Now, I don’t want to be a complete downer about this stuff. I do think that we will ultimately come back to a nicer, more user friendly Pray-Harrold– not all it could be and certainly not as good as a new building, but better than it is. And I do think it is a good thing for faculty and staff to get out of that building and to move around campus a bit. And I’m also very happy to not be teaching this spring when the chaos is going to hit the fan hard.
Incidentally, it would appear that the winner of the Pray-Harrold renovation pool is “Peter.” Unfortunately, since my advertising campaign did not yield much in the way of windfalls for prize money, all I can really offer is my congratulations. And an invitation for the construction complete pool that will begin soon….
EMU’s administration wants all of the excitement on campus to switch from the South to the North end. The University has spread itself far too thin, making much of the campus look like a ghost town on your average day. Now that we’re in finals/Spring-Summer, this effect is far worse.
Outside of art students, almost none of the undergraduate population spends time near the Welch, Ford, Boone, et cetera. The Student Center has only recently become populated and a genuine “center” for students during the 2009-2010 academic year, as all of the students who remember McKenny Union’s glory days are graduating/other. Most Freshmen also do not even realize this section of campus exists, a fact I only recently discovered.
The point of this rant? There is more than enough potential office space in Jones/Goddard for all of the offices in Pray-Harrold. The building is structurally sound and already has the adequate infrastructure for air conditioning. Plus, the JG complex is more centralized on campus, features the loveliest of courtyards and has bigger individual rooms than the towers. And, Jones/Goddard has windows that won’t freeze over should the Winter become too cold…
Which, by the way, all of the faculty have this to look forward to: http://hphotos-snc3.fbcdn.net/hs235.snc3/22242_509728665431_292000211_298733_2518096_n.jpg
Side note: I lived in Hill Hall the year after it was finished being renovated. EMU Housing not only will not, but can not replace the windows on any towers, as the process is too expensive. (The difference between why Brown-Munson apartments could have their windows redone and the towers not is the window size. The windows in Hill/Hoyt/Pittman are bigger which means they would have to be custom made, plus the architecture of the buildings relies on these quite large windows, which often have tiny holes, allowing for condensation to turn into ice.) Also – the heat in the Towers is ineffective in many of the rooms.
President Martin has stated she wants to keep Jones/Goddard for future use and won’t allow it to be demolished. The building is still in decent shape and features everything the faculty needs: the complex just needs work. Having just recently been inside the complex, I can personally tell you that if EMU invested the same amount of money into JG as they did the practice dome, all of the faculty would have warm, cushy offices for the next two years and, could make the money back by putting students there following the P-H renovations.
I attended a number of faculty input meetings on the PH renovations, and I recall being told that this was simply not on the table, Vinnie. And as to the current state of the buildings, I was lead to believe that Staffer is more accurate on this.
It’s too bad because if someone had thought a little more creatively, we could have easily made good use of this space in conjunction with the Pray-Harrold remodel. What I would have liked to have seen is a remodel of Jones-Goddard as offices, and then we might have been able to reclaim some of the office space in PH as classrooms.
I beg to differ with Vinnie. My office was IN Goddard for many years, and we finally were able to move out. The walls are literally cracking, the heating system is out of whack, the plumbing is in terrible condition – I’d estimate that on average we’d have pipes bursting 5-10 times per year. There’s asbestos a-plenty, and getting it abated in order to do the construction and repairs necessary make the building habitable again has got to be pretty expensive. And that was Goddard – said to be in much better condition than Jones.
If you’re only differing on the point of the building, you must then give me the points on the terrible state of the towers in general, and on the administration moving the focus of the campus to the North.
While I would definitely agree that faculty/staff would disagree with my opinion of being in JG, the point of my argument is that the building itself is still salvageable. Students were living in the buildings as recent as five years ago, they are still heated exceptionally well and to the point where the decay inside migis not as bad as one ht think. The theatre department still stores supplies in there and a feature film was even shot there last fall.
And, on your “walls cracking” point, the only places I’ve seen the walls in bad shape are the basement. Every other floor, they’re no worse than Wise or Buell.
Perhaps I was not clear in my original point. My example was that if EMU had an additional 3 million dollars to clean/renovate this space, they could regain with a better end result.
- This was a reference to the football practice space. Having a practically new, functioning residency hall/office space would benefit, as much of the FYC and Wise need restoration themselves and could give those buildings time to be closed.
- Money would eventually be made from students who would want to live in that section of campus, as it is closer to PH, Roosevelt, Quirk, Alexander and Ypsilanti city.
– Hill Hall: new furniture, a redone building. The infrastructure of the towers however is in itself broken, as the architecture is dependent on oversized windows that are too expensive to replace. They leak air. Many, if not most of the residents I spoke with ended up disliking the place, as it did also cost an extra grand per semester to live in and was inconveniently placed to everywhere but the Student Center.
— Housing has been in the slow process of renovation, beginning with Downing Hall. Hill Hall was the second and for one main reason – to give the building a new image following the incident. Talking to anyone in housing at the time, renovating Hill second was not the original order.
I do not care about the popularity of this idea, but as I am aware that many members of the EMU community read this blog, I wanted to make my views known. If you truly think the JG complex is terrible, take a tour on any sunny day (as the buildings are not too hard to enter) and compare the conditions to that of Wise or Buell. I think all would be in shock.
I don’t disagree with you, Vinnie– I think we should be putting some money into JG as part of the PH project too. I’m just saying that this was something that wasn’t on the table early-on.
I also agree with you completely about the shift of campus to the north. The nice thing about this is it means that the library and the student center are more “in the middle of it all,” and I do think the student center is a great facility. But this has really changed the flow of campus. I think you’re right that this makes the south side of campus a bit of a ghost town, which is a shame since I think a good argument could be made that this is the “pretty” part of campus. With any luck, one of the upsides of closing Pray-Harrold will that we’ll have to use space in places like McKenney, and faculty and students will rediscover it.
But beyond that, as a new colleague of mine noted (something I hadn’t really noticed since I’ve been here too long), one other thing about the shift north is the now awkward placement of the pool, Rec/IM and Bowen complex. Before the student center, this structure was arguably on the north edge of campus, sort of EMU’s back door. But now, with most the foot traffic on campus going between the student center/library/parking areas to Pray-Harrold and Porter along West Circle Drive (which of course has a fair amount of car traffic too), and this literally makes the Rec/IM and Bowen complex seem like it’s in the way.
I don’t think there’s an easy solution to this, of course. We we could do anything we wanted to solve the campus layout problem, I think what I would advocate is more or less reversing the place of “university park” and the Rec/IM and Bowen complex– take a look at this map of campus to see what I mean.
Get ready for real problems. My spring/summer classes, which require computer labs, were just rescheduled into a 15 x 10 seminar room with no computers. I guess the ‘suits’ figure that my 25 students in each of my classes are going to stand all spring/summer, and those computer fees they paid for in order to take my classes will be absorbed by the College of Education and the Art folks who booted me and others out of their labs. Oh, the title of my course does include “TECHNOLOGY” but apparently, the schedulers assumed we would not need computers even though labs for all my classes were requested.
As you can tell, I’m very upset because 1) the schedulers have really dropped the ball on this one; and 2) no one seems very concerned that I will have 25 students standing in Rackham on May 3rd (first day of spring term) with no classroom, no computers, and a wasted full day of class (which counts for a week of a regular term).
I don’t normally get upset when things go awry, figuring that everything will sort itself out. But this situation is untenable and from what I understand, little or nothing is being done to move my 2 spring classes and my 2 summer classes into computer labs. Now, I really don’t think all the labs on campus are full spring and summer. So my guess is that some sort of political maneuvering is going on, and we, the English dept and our students are suffering because of it.
By the way, my spring and summer classes are fully enrolled.
I wish you all luck in the move. My daughter lived in Jones during the Shelton administration. While it was livable, it was in pretty bad shape. This just goes to show how much deferred maintenance there is. Not to mention the fact that once the State of Michigan builds a new academic building and turn it over to the University, not one penny is ever provided for maintenance.