By Tim Peyton
Students can’t make it out of the side of North anymore due to the broken step. Walking out the front door from North only leads to a gigantic puddle in front of the Union. “We were thinking of getting boats to cross it,” said first year Stacy Wood Burgess. In the Caf all the tables by the window are gone. Red ‘caution’ tape surrounds where they once were. If you ever decide to play pool, chances are you won’t find a stick because they are broken so often. Students trying to work in AIMAC can barely stand to be in there because of the broken window. This sounds like some sort of nightmare but unfortunately this is the state of Antioch College these days.
Some students are even getting injured because of these issues. International student Yoshitomo Kawai fell the other day walking up the steps to North. “ I was holding a glass of wine and it got everywhere,” Yoshi said. Some students are also having trouble getting to class on time because of the ice and large salt cubes on walkways.
Fortunately the Physical Plant is doing all they can to help. Since the school is in such bad financial state, all staff departments are running on empty. Darrell Cook from the Physical plant says, “ A contractor is coming to weld in a metal step to replace the broken one on North. I don’t even know how something like that gets broken”. It is really mind-boggling how some things break around here but with such old buildings it’s not a surprise we’re having these problems.
There has always been a strong point made when talking about our public school system, a lot of public schools aren’t properly maintained. What this tells kids is that we don’t care about them and we don’t want to invest in their futures. Some students have similar feelings when talking about the state of things around here. Students pay a lot of money to go here and when their basic needs aren’t met, they start to feel a little cheated.
But other students find some optimism in the collapsing buildings, even if it is a bit sarcastic. Stacy Wood-Burgess says “ These things help build character – there’s nothing like a little black mold in your life”. There is a portion of future students who are looking for a campus that still has its historic charm and hidden secrets here and there. There is a unique beauty on this campus that should be advertised for prospective students who want to live on a campus that doesn’t look like an ordinary institution. But when conditions become dangerous and almost unbearable, the community needs to work together to do something about it.
Let’s be honest, students break stuff on campus all the time. Most of the time there’s no maliciousness intended, but carelessness is always involved. How do we help maintain our campus and prevent this place from turning into an Ohio State branch campus? There are plenty of things that could be done to improve this campus that aren’t expensive or too difficult. Here are a few: Recycle your glass bottles, clean up your cigarette butts, and try not to get too drunk and break all the pool sticks. These repairs aren’t going to happen anytime soon, but in that time we can improve our campus if we try.