Over the summer, the Co- College invested over $1 million in renovating Topliff. I happened to get a single in the "new Topliff" and it became obvious that nobody had bothered to get any student input on the renovation process.
How do I know this? Well, first off, there are no cubby holes in the bathroom. Any student would have reminded the renovating panel that a place to put all of your toiletries is necessary.
Secondly, everything in the dorm is painted white. The walls, the ceiling, the floor, the mid-panel trims -- everything is white. Either the KKK (Not Tri-Kap) was in charge of paint or someone who was color blind. Or perhaps the College realized that white paint is, on average, $.00003 cheaper per gallon. For whatever reason, the more than 200 students who live here now feel like they're in the loony-bin.
The renovators also took out the built-in beds. These things were awesome. They gave the dorm character, the students a nice place to sleep, and left us feeling like we were home, not on some army cot at basic training. Any normal student would have convinced the commission to keep the real beds, which were the last remaining ones on campus.
Worse still, is that if you decide you want to replace the new cots with something else to sleep on, you have to pay $20 to put them in controlled storage -- $10 for the frame and $10 for the mattress. And you have to bring them there. Thanks to the Administration for nickel and diming us; that really makes the student body feel good.
But does the Administration really care about us? Obviously not. I mean it will invest hundreds of thousands to be 'ether-net' ready but not $50 so a floor can keep their toothbrushes near-by. Technology is cool, but bad breath really, really sucks.
The point of this column is that, yet again, the College has gone off, opened it's scroogy wallet for a cool million, and not even bothered to get any student input. I mean call me crazy, but when renovating a dorm for 200 STUDENTS, don't you think you might want to run the plans by one or two?
The rhetoric from the Administration constantly classifies us as "intelligent, outspoken, self-motivated young adults," but, in reality, they don't even ask us about re-doing our rooms. Excuse me, but some of us know what condescending means, and we can even tell when it's happening.
So how about it, Parkhurst? A little RESP-CT? First, can you at least ask a few students who lived in Topliff what they thought about the built-in-beds? How about getting some student input on dorm renovation? And if you guys are serious about including students in administrative decisions, how bout putting one of us on the Tenure Committee?
Uh-oh, a big flashing red light is going off at the dean's office!! I mean, isn't it absurd that there is no student on the tenure committee? Perhaps that's why we keep letting some of our best professors go. For example, Asian Studies Professor Shalom Goldman and Drama Professor Sam Able. They were incredible professors in the classroom, but they were let go because of stupid faculty in-fighting.
Hopefully, one day this Administration will wake up to the fact that students are valuable resources and can make this College better in reality, not just in rhetoric. Just think, Dartmouth might even move out of that number seven ranking if we kept some good professors and improved our quality of life. Until then, we can look forward to being treated like inane fifth graders.
These white walls are really getting to me.
