I invite you to take a walk around campus some day, when you’ve got free time and the chance to relax.
Pass by the old geography building and see if you can’t see in the windows of this condemned structure, just a bit of blighted wasted space on our fair campus.
Check out Murray, and how it’s sitting there, looking pretty while doing pretty much nothing.
Check out Hanner Hall and look at how the graduate teaching students work — in a noisy, cramped cubicle farm from some demented Dilbert cartoon.
Take a close look at the Classroom building, and how that building is being abused by students on a regular basis who forget we’re still paying for it.
Drop by Gallagher-Iba and pass by some of the offices there.
You’d be surprised by their size. Some of the offices I’ve seen in that building have got to be larger than my entire apartment.
And of course, do this all while avoiding getting run over in the parking lots and streets of our campus, since the streets are as crowded as the halls and classrooms.
As a side note, I find it odd that I can watch some of the ubiquitous squirrels on campus actually use the crosswalks and look both ways before crossing, and yet none of the students practice this lost art.
But I digress.
Obviously, our cramped campus is not a case of lack of space, but a bad case of inefficient use of the space we have.
In the almost six years I’ve lived in Stillwater and 4 that I’ve worked at OSU, I’ve never been to a single football game, pep rally or major school-wide function.
I’ve never stepped into the Gallagher-Iba arena, never sat on the bleachers in the Girl’s Softball stadium, or done anything more than pass by the wrestling hall of fame.
As a matter of fact, I haven’t so much as attended an intramural putt-putt match.
It almost goes without saying that athletics are not my thing, so to speak.
It’s kind of disheartening, then, that we’re spending tens of millions of dollars on a stadium I will most likely never use, while offices are cramped and decrepit, classrooms are in some cases literally falling apart, asbestos lines the ceilings of most of the buildings on campus, and the “large and in charge” get new office renovations almost as often as I see squirrels scampering across the street while dodging traffic like some mammalian version of “Frogger.”
Of course, academics doesn’t sell as well as football, and everyone will tell you it’s a case of “different monies.”
My tuition dollars, however, are still coming out of the same account, so it sure doesn’t feel to me like different monies.
Perhaps I can decrease the allocation on my personal education line-item to reshuffle funds into my beer and pizza account.
I’m sure the bursar office will understand that it’s different monies, after all.
Ultimately, here’s to successfully dodging traffic and collections agents.
Originally printed in The Daily O’CollegianFebruary 25th, 2005
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