Where are the Welch Hall suits or President Martin when you need them? Oh, my….
In my role as the English department alternate, I went to a meeting yesterday of the Pray-Harrold advisory committee, a meeting that reminded me a bit of one of those endurance tests on the TV show Survivor.. For those of you unfamiliar with the show: there are frequent “challenges” that involve something like standing on one leg or holding your arm up as long as you can, and the winner/last person left of these challenges receives some sort of reward– immunity from being voted off the island, a cheeseburger, whatever. I don’t know who was the last person standing at this particular meeting since I bowed out at hour three of the four hour marathon session.
Anyway, the last time I went to one of these meetings back in mid December, I came away cautiously optimistic about the budget being large enough to afford some modest building remodeling beyond the mechanical– the HVAC and the electrical systems. After Friday’s meeting, I am now decidedly pessimistic.
EMU and the state of Michigan is getting ready to spend $30+ million dollars and a couple years on renovations, and right now, I think the best case scenario for Pray-Harrold after construction is we will end up with a building not too far from the status quo. Sure, it will probably be modestly better in terms of comfort (air quality, temperature, some lighting, new paint, no plugs in the floors of offices, maybe a few new chairs and desks, etc.). But at best, Pray-Harrold will remain the same in terms of configuration (classrooms, offices, furnishings, etc.), it’s still not going to be possible for anyone with any sort of mobility disability to maneuver in the largely-outmoded lecture halls, and there still won’t be any meaningful “social spaces” for students and others hanging around.
The worst case scenario? Wow, the sky is the limit on that one. It’s easy to imagine a PR nightmare– $30 million dollars, and we still don’t have handicapped accessible rest rooms or lecture halls? It is easy to imagine a new HVAC system not making much difference in the overall comfort-level of the building– that is, you still end up with hot and cold spots because of the fatally flawed bones of the structure. And it is extremely easy to imagine the ripple-effect this project will have throughout the institution, impacting everything from credit hour production, class scheduling, and teaching loads. In short, a train wreck.
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