My threshold of insignificant but stupid things has recently been breached, and I must vent about some (additional) goings on at Mr. Jefferson’s university.
The folks in charge of engineering facilities seem to have sense for aesthetics. This doesn’t really matter to me, but on such a “beautiful campus” they bug me a little bit more.
Thornton Hall is a maze. The 5 sections are each a wing, and they don’t interconnect well. Going from point A to point B in this building typically involves going outside. Finding a men’s restroom can be dangerous to your bladder. If you’re in the computer lab on the 2nd floor of the A-Wing at night, the nearest bathroom is probably in the basement of the C-Wing, just before where the E-Wing starts.
The MSE building is making progress. Until recently many walls were covered with horrible abstract engineering paintings. Fortunately the walls were cleaned, but they were repainted white with brown trim. There, fortunately, the men’s bathroom is easy to find. Inside however resides a filing cabinet (frat club anyone?). During the painting, a nice little display of how to make aluminum cans was moved, apparently permanently, into the restroom.
Now for my home away from home, the mechanical & aerospace building. A mechanical engineering building should not have an elevator that is best drescribed as “barely functional” and “a little bit scary.” The displays in the building were all appropriate about 15 years ago. Highlighting old equipment to emphasize changes is great, but it’s sad when the “new” equipment had its heyday before the first year students were born. And if you want free junk, just stroll around the basement. I’m sure they’ll be glad for some of the stuff to disappear. And the bare concrete floors in the hallways look real nice.
Furthermore, the design of the building is horrid. It sits on a hill, or maybe more of a ridge. Either way the first floor of the building is above the equivalent floors of the buildings to the east and west. The main entrances to the building, however, are on the 2nd floor. So out front a temporary wheelchair ramp has been built to overcome the ascent required for entrance. Now, there’s probably a law mandating this, but on the ramp is a little blue sign with the image of a wheelchair that says “handicapped ramp”… as opposed to the skateboarding and biking ramps.
Finally I’d like to address the parking garage. It does not seem badly designed, just annoyingly managed. Unless you ride the bus to the garage (and we know why I don’t ride the bus), the most convenient door and stairwell are on the southeast corner. But this door is kept locked 90% of the time. Somehow, a few weeks ago, the door became unlocked and saved me some footsteps everyday. Whoever did it also left a note written on the door in some kind of marker begging for the door to be left unlocked. Well today I noticed that the powers-that-be put up stickered lettering on the inside of the glass door stating it was to remain locked and to please use the main entrance. They did not bother to remove the message in marker.
The traffic pattern just outside the gates of the garage is that of a 3-way intersection. Both paths leading toward the garage had always had red octagonal stop signs, white stripes on the road, and “stop” painted just before them. The road leading from the garage had a white stripe, but not a damn thing saying to stop. That was until today. The road has been painted with “stop”, although there is no sign. Then I noticed that the stop-sign post coming from the other direction had a little red sign: “2-Way.”
That is all.
