As you’re reading this, my best friends from high school are speeding down Interstate 95 toward South Beach in Florida to properly celebrate their last college spring break. I’m trapped in my carrel, battling a mild hangover (OK, a major hangover) made no more manageable by the deafening construction going on directly over my head and right outside my carrel. So, yes, you could say I’m feeling a little bit bitter. It’s not that I’m trapped at school while others have departed for parts tropical that gets me — that one is my own damn fault. I should have started my [redacted terrifying word] earlier. Rather, it’s that so many things about the experience, both big and small, are and will continue to be wrong.
Take, for instance, that construction I mentioned. Some genius in the administration decided that it would be a great idea for it to take place during the one time of year that Firestone Library is most desperately needed. Seriously, this couldn’t have happened last fall after the summer schedule didn’t work out? How could someone possibly think that February, March and April were good times to be tearing out walls and jack-hammering right next to a lot of seniors’ carrels? The timing of this construction is just so moronic that I’m shocked it ever got out of committee. Doesn’t anyone who runs this school have an idea of how students actually live? Maybe I’m biased: After all, this construction is happening less than two feet away from me. But I’m willing to go out on a limb and suggest that mine isn’t a minority opinion.
The inimitable University spokeswoman Cass Cliatt ’96 claimed in The Daily Princetonian’s article on the construction that all seniors in “adjacent carrels” were warned beforehand and offered a chance to switch to quieter pastures. In my case, that is simply untrue. Perhaps I didn’t fit the University’s definition of an “adjacent carrel” because I’m right underneath, as opposed to across from, the staff lounge, but I did have a ladder propped up against my door on Monday. In the grand scheme of things, it’s only a small lie, and as a spokeswoman Cliatt is paid to spin, but it still rankles.
What is particularly galling is that this construction kills my opportunity to work at Firestone in the morning, while the University’s bull-headed insistence on an 11:45 p.m. closing time for the library ensures that I can’t really work there at night either. The University has in the past protested that extending Firestone’s hours to 2 a.m. on weekdays and 4 a.m. during midterms and finals would cost “more than a couple hundred thousand dollars.” I’d consider that cost to be more than justified: When, according to University surveys, half of the student body is up to 2 a.m. on a regular basis studying, then the most important and by far the most useful study space on campus should be open to 2 a.m. as well. Nor is Frist Campus Center a really acceptable alternative: Access to the stacks can’t be duplicated in the gallery.
Matt Kandel ’09 wrote a hilarious column on this subject two weeks ago, and the USG under former president Josh Weinstein ’09 admirably made this issue a priority. Whatever one’s problems with Weinstein’s USG tenure — and I have a ton of my own — he should be commended for his excellent work in this area. Unfortunately, current president Connor Diemand-Yauman ’10 does not seem intent on following up on Weinstein’s efforts. In an interview with the ‘Prince,’ Diemand-Yauman suggested that it wouldn’t be “prudent” to spend money expanding access in the current tough economic times. Yet if the University’s cost estimates are accurate, we’re talking about an extremely high benefit-cost ratio here. I strongly urge Diemand-Yauman to re-examine his stance on this issue, and I ask that the University continue to prioritize it regardless of what the USG chooses to do.
If the University wants to commit itself to getting the small issues right in the future, it could also reconsider the decision-making process that led it to schedule maintenance on Firestone’s heating system during midterms week. Though the University said in its announcement of that construction that it was pretty sure the building wouldn’t be affected, why take that chance during midterms when waiting a week would affect far fewer people if things went wrong? That was a needless risk and the timing a needless annoyance. Avoiding self-inflicted mistakes of this nature should be a key goal going forward. At Princeton, the problem is all too often these small things that in aggregate loom quite large, and that’s a problem for the whole school.
Barry Caro is a history major from White Plains, N.Y. He can be reached at bcaro@princeton.edu.
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