The Administration has really served faculty this time.
After promising to communicate any plans to have construction on any natural areas on campus, the Campus Sustainability Committee was not informed until one month before plans to cut down 20 percent of the forest behind the apartments.
And while parking can be argued as a major problem on this campus, there’s one major piece of information missing: who will be able to park there?
Sophomores are still angered by their revoked car privileges, and the parking lot in question, which is reserved for Quick Center patrons only, remains empty most of the time. The current parking lot north of Kostka is being used as a new dorm location, so naturally students in the Village Complex will need more parking. The South End of campus may be a difficult area for parking, but really only on the rare occasions when a Quick Center event and, say, a dinner of the Dolan School of Business are scheduled for the same night.
Faculty are also angered because long-term academic research projects will be hurt in the process of cutting down trees. Not to mention, this campus is supposed to be going green, and it seems pretty contradictory to preach this to Fairfield applicants when we are cutting down trees for parking lots without even giving thought to alternatives.
Perhaps the late notice was an error in communication, and perhaps it was the responsibility of the professors to attend Fairfield planning and zoning committee meetings.
Communication about construction has been a problem before, mainly with the Co-Gen plant in 2007, the area between the pond and Quick Center, where brush was removed, and again with the construction of the new Jesuit Residence.
Although faculty members are disappointed with the situation, they are still willing to think about alternatives that are less harmful to the environment. Rather than spending a few thousand dollars cutting down trees, we could create better walkways from the St. Ignatius Hall parking lot leading to the Quick Center, or from the parking lot behind Alumni Hall.
A sense of powerlessness has been resurrected in faculty, who push to promote green efforts on this campus, and feel they are promising students opportunities that are repeatedly thwarted by the administration.
In their short time here, students trying to make a difference feel power taken away as well, yet the hopefulness of youth seems to shine through.
As students were surveying the people of the Quick Center, Zachary Gross ’12 turned to Alex Roem ’10 and said, with a tone verging on defeat: “Do you think we are making a difference?”
“Absolutely,” she said.
Leave a Reply