Digging for Gold

By Abby Wolpiuk

Students who thrive on routine and consistency are continually being faced with new fences set up all over the most populated parts of campus. During the morning scramble to get to class, the last thing students need is to have to change their usual route. However, with the recent outbreak of new construction areas, students are constantly adapting to blocked-off areas of campus.

At the beginning of this school year, the construction was contained between Pangborn and Gowan. Apart from the annoyance of metallic hammering echoing in classrooms near construction, the work being done outside was static. Students could rely on their route to class to be inconvenient but still normal because the construction and fences were in one place.

During the end of the Fall semester and especially this Spring, more fences were put up in new, heavily-congested areas of campus. The entire Pryzbyla lawn and Crough lawn are blocked off and if students want to get from the Pryzbyla to McMahon, they can no longer go in a diagonal.

Further, when Spring comes, the Pryzbyla lawn is a a staple for students to read, throw a frisbee around, or hang out with friends. Students are worried that the state of the lawn when it becomes nice outside will be unusable. As it appears the construction will uproot both the grass and Spring study plans, students will need to find another place for camaraderie.

The construction seems purposeless because there is no end in sight for students and its unpredictability causes inconvenience within campus. Students who call Ubers to campus watch the drivers on their screen get lost because the map does not adapt to the new fences and work zones. Sometimes, these students are even charged a fee because the drivers are unable to locate the pick-up zone due to the poor continuity and direction of the construction.

Visually, there is nothing to do to ease the eyesore of construction against the bleak backdrop of winter. The construction workers have dug up pipes and piled unsavory mounds of dirt on the lawns while the dust has settled in a fine layer over campus.

What’s more crushing is that everything looks the same after the workers “finish” drilling an area. When the road between Mullen Library and Crough were blocked off, the only thing students saw while walking by was workers drilling holes in the pavement. Currently, the only visible fruit of their labor is half of the road newly paved while the other half looks the same.

The school has stated that all of this work is being done underground. The most unbearable part of this construction is not being able to see a positive change on campus. It would be nice for members of the community to see something beautiful or useful as a result of the school’s efforts, but there is nothing to look at besides dirt, gravel, and steam rising from the sewers.

Construction projects are undoubtedly arduous processes, however, the current state of the project seems perpetual. Perhaps the work will be worth it in years to come, but for current students, the construction is like a purgatory of fences and dust that we all hope to end soon.