Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Those are the oh-so-wonderful sounds that we've all come to know and love on a campus consumed by Machiavellian tactics for getting things done regardless of who's trampled on in the process.
It seems as if the guys driving the construction vehicles outside Silsby go in reverse at 7 a.m. just for kicks. Can't you just see them, smirking evilly, thinking, "Thank God for the crisp New England air, now my beeping will wake up every little puke on campus."
But I won't continue to drag you through my own personal crusade against the Silsby construction. Sure, from my room high atop Russell Sage, I'm woken up bright and early every morning by a sound comparable to an alarm clock going off for two consecutive hours, but that in no way applies to any of you.
However, something that has been troubling me far more, as well as anyone unfortunate to ask for my help when I work at the Baker info desk, is how the school only thought about the beginning and the end of the Berry construction process -- but absolutely nothing in between.
There's nothing wrong with improving the school; there's construction on pretty much every college campus I've ever been on. Schools need to be modernized and updated to attract new generations of students. Unfortunate, at least here, is how so many of these new projects develop without any student input, to the detriment of the academic environment. Someone needs to realize that there are students who actually attend this school already!
Aside from keeping much of Russell Sage from getting the sleep necessary to function properly for class, this also means building a library by focusing only on how great it will be when it's done without thinking at all about what it's doing to the students who have to put up with it in the meantime. I got my first glimpse of Berry after I had heard the reports of a vast number of students who had already decided they disapproved due to its sterile, hospital-like atmosphere and its complete lack of any Ivy League feel (whatever that means). Maybe these reports tainted my initial reaction, but upon winding through the old stacks to look upon Berry for the first time, I immediately noticed how it did not have the cozy, warm feeling of Baker -- the old charm -- the reason people decide to come to a school that's been around for 230 years.
Another unsettling aspect of the Berry project is the angle at which it was built. When it first started taking shape last year, I was just wondering what the architect was smoking when he decided it should be built at an angle instead of in line with the Green like Baker. Finally my veil of ignorance was lifted this year when it suddenly hit me, walking out of a class in Moore, that Berry was designed to face the new psychology building. And then, horror of horrors, I realized that the beginnings of the "second green" between Berry and Moore were underway. When I come back for my 25th reunion this place will be unrecognizable.
That's not the worst of it, though. When being batted about last year, there was a great deal of disapproval regarding making a new academic quad behind Berry, but there were its supporters too -- supporters of moving ahead, keeping up with progress, in the spirit of the liberal academic tradition. Supporters of "Dartmouth of the future." But I have yet to find one student who supports the disappearance of almost every remnant of study space in the library and the complete and utter confusion permeating the construction project.
The 1902 Room is closed to students now. The Reserve Corridor is only half of its former self, and that half is now only open until midnight, meaning we've lost the best 24-hour meeting and studying location on campus. In the meantime, study space in Berry is still being constructed, the 24-hour cafe, while a nice touch, has a ways to go, and anybody you ask in the library (including me) is at a loss to tell you where anything is. Good luck finding anything in the stacks!
Moreover, the whole process of moving Kiewit is entirely off schedule and makes absolutely no sense within the context of the rest of the project. With the main entrance still under construction, in order to retrieve something from Kiewit, one must wind all the way through Baker and go downstairs to find the print output window. And that's not the end of it since part of Kiewit remains in Gerry. And even when the entrance is open it will still be inconveniently located as long as the Shower Towers remain standing, which as far as I know will be several more years.
The point of these rambling complaints is just that, like in everything else, it would be nice if those responsible for these new projects would ask for the opinions of the students in the first place, let alone heed the input we give. After all, the students are the ones who will be using the library and the study space, the ones that all of these projects will ultimately affect. And we're only here for four years, meaning that while all of this is happening our entire Dartmouth experience will be tainted by the frustrations of a project whose fruits we will never get to take advantage of.
Such is the price of progress. Dartmouth is always thinking ahead to new ways of attracting new students, and I have no doubt that the new facilities will ultimately be fully operational and helpful and probably an improvement on what we had before -- especially when Kiewit and the Shower Towers are forever wiped away. However, there are students currently attending this institution, and in the school's mad desire to look ahead, it seems to have ignored the needs of those of us enduring the transition period; the interim facilities we have to deal with are, to say the least, lacking. I hope it all becomes worth it in the end when Dartmouth rises to number one in the U.S. News and World Report rankings. For the time being, if you come to the info desk with a question, don't ask me!
