I hesitate posting this because, as I commented earlier, I think the adjectives of “ashamed” and “outrage” are a little over the top at this point about the key snafus. There’s a need for everyone to go into tomorrow’s grand opening of Pray-Harrold for classes with a little bit of optimism and lots of patience. On the plus-side, I think there are many features in the building that will make it a much more comfortable space for learning and working, and while there will obviously be construction folks doing various construction things for the rest of the semester and adjusting temperatures and everything else, it is pretty impressive how much they’ve been able to accomplish in less than a week. No one would confuse Pray-Harrold with a “brand new” building, but it’s a heck of a lot nicer than it was, and if you had never been in Pray-Harrold before, you’d wonder why people complained so much about it.
So thumbs up to all that, and patience-patience-patience, happy-thoughts, happy-thoughts, happy-thoughts.
However, I think that the powers that suits at all levels better be aware that there’s a fine line between faculty, staff, and students tolerating a few problems and… well, not.
I wasn’t at the College of Arts and Sciences meeting today in part because I was wrestling with the schizophrenic copier/scanner (that’s nothing new, btw), but I heard President Martin was there and among other things joked about the lack of keys. Ha. Ha-ha.
I did run into a guy from the physical plant today in Pray-Harrold who was there to deal with keys. He seemed like a nice and earnest guy and all, but I did not get a sense from him that he had any idea of the extent of the problem. There are around 150 people in my department (once you count up all the graduate assistants, part-timers, lecturers, faculty, and staff), and as far as I can tell, there are two keys to open up all those offices. And don’t get me started talking about getting into locked classrooms and computer labs.
Anyway, everyone knows there are going to be problems and hopefully people are bracing for it as best they can. I think if the key issues are mostly resolved by early next week, this will all be forgotten. But what I worry about is that the key shop and the physical plant are so overwhelmed that they simply cannot complete this work without subcontracting some of it on an emergency basis, and that’s money I am certain the administration is going to do all it can to avoid spending. And if the key problems linger on into September, well, I have a feeling these are problems that will be remembered and adjectives like “outrage” will be more appropriate and nouns like “grievance.” And key snafus have a way of causing all kinds of problems.
From Annarbor.com comes 
