The Economy Is Tanking; Campus Construction Unaffected!
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that despite the rest of the world’s economic slump, college remains just one really large bubble separated from the outside world, as campus construction projects continue to be built, irregardless of sub-prime mortgage crises, a weakening dollar, or rising energy costs.
At Ithaca College, at least, you can see this in action perfectly, despite the ever increasing price of gas, tuition, and life in general. (not to mention student loans!) There’s a building under construction, another one just finished, and yet another site of empty land on campus being prepared for a multi-million dollar athletics center. It’s construction on steroids.
According to the article, colleges are actually hurrying to finish projects before construction costs shoot up astronomically, at which point, they’ll probably just pass on the costs to students! Yay!
“We’ve been projecting significant construction-cost escalations for the past several years,” said Michael E. McKay, Princeton University’s vice president for facilities, “and unfortunately we’ve been right.”
Well, there’ll certainly be a lot of shiny new buildings sitting on perfectly manicured quads … but don’t expect any middle class students to be in them! (Except rich, rich schools like Harvard. They can afford to educate the middle class.)
Roundup: Oops! edition
Suing a master: So MIT is suing Frank Gehry, claiming flaws in the $300 million Stata Center have caused mold to grow, allows snow to block emergency exits, and injures small children invites leaks. I’ve never seen this except in pictures, and while it looks pretty beautiful to me, it’s also fairly obvious that there could be some design issues that might cause things like leaks and the dropping of snow (Globe architect critic Robert Campbell echoes these thoughts). Boston University president emeritus John Silber, who’s quoted in the article calling the building “a disaster,” wrote a book about how much he hates it … and maybe Gehry too? ? “Architecture of the Absurd: How ‘Genius’ Disfigured a Practical Art.”
On one of the Chronicle’s blogs, there’s a comment from an MIT faculty member who is enamored with the building despite its flaws. And there is also concern from architects about what good suing an architect will do. The article in The Chronicle (behind the pay wall) also brings up the classic debate of boring yet functional vs. inspirational but problematic. (I’d say hello, anybody ever hear of Louis I. Kahn? Beautiful yet functional.)
On this campus I’d say we have a bit of a bias towards boring buildings, or maybe just ugly buildings. I think it’s starting to change with this new business school (that I’m personally coining Dotty Hall) and maybe the fieldhouse Athletics and Events Center.
So about saving Antioch… Some of the alumni are not too happy about that deal they struck the other day to “save” Antioch College. In a not-so-surprising move, alumni are claiming (Chronicle ? watch that pay wall) the Board of Trustees made out like a bandit with their vague wording. It sounds like the alumni were hoping there’d be some changes and a lot more control than they are getting, particularly in a new governing board. So they’ll sit on their money until they see something real happen. Makes sense to me.
Oh, and apparently Antioch is using some of the money to repay other universities in their system instead of making the college better? So they’re not happy about that either.
Average Sophomore = DRUNKEN MESS: No comment.
Your turn to Oops! This is completely unrelated to the previous briefs or higher education in general ? except for maybe higher-order thinking ? but a new collaborative weather site has been launched. It’s called cumul.us, and it lets you predict the weather. Very neat concept. I’m thinking about joining it (what’s yet another social network when Facebook is shilling you out?), and if you’re from Ithaca here’s the link ? but you should be able to change it wherever you are.
Ithaca is newsworthy?
When I first arrived in rainy, cold (it’s raining and cold right now) Ithaca three and a half years ago, it seemed like there was never any news here. We were just that hippie city surrounded by ten square miles or so of reality, or whatever that stupid bumper sticker says. Ithacans kept to themselves and their drum circles and solar panels, and everything was fine. Deader than Jerry Garcia for those of us practicing journalism, though.
But our city and college have been awash in interesting, newsworthy stuff lately. First, the Dalai Lama rolled through. As always, he’s a big deal. Sandra Day O’Connor and Stephen Colbert are in town this week, too. One had a profound effect on many of the most important legal decisions that now affect our society on every level. The other’s running for president. I consider just these three visits, collectively, to be evidence that our little city is, however transiently, a Big Deal.
And it keeps getting better, at least for the news monkeys/junkies creeping on this blog: this week, the national media picked up on our city for two very different reasons. The New York Times ran an article today about racial tensions simmering in the bitter, socio-ethnic brew that is the Ithaca City School District. I personally think we did a better job almost three weeks ago, but hey, who’s counting?
Then there’s the article in the latest issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education about our school’s plan to construct two LEED-certified green buildings at the doorstep of our campus. We also did a better job on this story almost a month ago, but again, it’s nice to have the coverage, MSM.
So here’s to hoping there’ll be more news in Ithaca. It’ll certainly make my job a little more interesting.
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