Shape up, UH campus

Neglected campus grounds reflect on school's potential

I remember the brochures and course catalogs I received in the mail during my senior year of high school. When choosing colleges I didn't have many criteria besides affordable tuition and a baccalaureate program in international business. Back then, the best school for me was the University of Hawai`i--Manoa.

I read all the stats on ethnic diversity, tourism-related job prospects, and average SAT scores of the student body. I'd have to say the only things I didn't think of looking up was the state auditor's report on university management.

Although the brochures that UH distributes talk a good game, the reality of the university's operations are a far cry from the idealistic advertisements issued at the Campus Center's information window.

One need look no farther than our own campus to see how embarrassingly amateur our university's administration is. In my phone conversation with our Director of Facilities, Grounds and Safety, [name deleted] could not remember which building was Watanabe Hall, let alone identify the monolith sculpture standing just outside.

This comes from an administrator who has been working at UH for, in her own words, "long enough."

In light of the number of experts we have, from architecture and engineering to geography and landscaping, shouldn't we be able to foresee some of the problems that have occurred with some of our permanent structures?

Especially since Mau has been working her "long enough," I find it surprising that an FGS director cannot even recall where Watanabe Hall is.

Considering the drop in enrollment, wouldn't we want to present the grounds in the best way we can? High school students need to see the advantages of attending UH versus a Mainland school.

Graduate students need to see how a UH degree will benefit them. A messy, unkempt campus detracts from the auspicious descriptions UH sends to prospective students.

Yet UH seems unconcerned about how we present the grounds to visitors. Uncollected rubbish near Campus Center has been sitting for two months. Construction projects spend weeks in the clean-up phase, and by then whatever grass may have been there has died, leaving a huge patch of dirt that urns into a mud-filled pit every time it gets watered.

Pick-up trucks leave tire tracks in both Maile Way and the Quad grounds. One can't even walk from Crawford Hall to Dean Hall -- a two-minute trip -- without caking their slippers with grime or soaking their feel in a sprinkler-made pond.

And it's not just the grounds that have problems. The Korean Studies Building, proudly pictured in the 1995-1997 course catalog book and touted as having been modeled on the Kyongbok Palace in Seoul, actually more closely resembles the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea.

This facility has been sectioned off by orange plastic fencing since September 1995. Its design went so far as to include a clay roofing base, like its Korean counterpart. The only problem is that Hawai`i gets way more rain than Seoul, and the clay has eroded, loosening the tiles.

Hardly the sort of thing that would make its way into a student prospectus, it is one explanation why the predominant emotion displayed toward the university is apathy.

If we as a student body held any sort of wavering commitment to this disposition, we all would have quit school a long time ago, succumbing to frustration and disappointment on the very first day.

Especially since the budget cuts, furnishing a building has become increasingly difficult. One of our most recent constructions, the Pacific Ocean Science Technology building, could not be fully equipped because of budget constraints.

A choice has to be made whether to decrease the building's size or leave some rooms "temporarily" unusable doe to lack of lab materials. As a result, we built a nice-looking structure, but can only utilize a portion of the full capacity.

There are other, less-known structures on campus that need explaining. The Watanabe monolith sculpture, called "Krypton 1x6x18," stands out as one of the most curious. Modeled after the monolith in "2001: A Space Odyssey," it was installed in 1973.

Originally, it emitted a low hum, but because of complaints and the energy crunch in 1974, it was turned off. he only thing it's good for today is reminding reminiscent alumni why they looked forward to graduation.

On top of all of this, we now have a new softball stadium. All the other snafus pale in comparison to this one. No one realized that home place wouldn't be visible to over three-quarters of the seating until it was 90 percent complete.

Among the finest examples of UH's mediocre foresight, this stands paramount. Sure, we build impressive structures, but we either can't completely finish them, can't get it right if we do, or can't repair them within a reasonable amount of time.

Is it just me, or is this more than just a bit ridiculous? Perhaps it's just what we've come to expect from our largest, most bureaucratic educational organizations.

In an age when downsizing, intense marketing, and cutthroat competition gives victory only to the leanest corporations, the only reason UH still stands is that its state support and financing.

If granting autonomy forces UH to become an efficient, international competitive organization driven to be the best school in Oceania and the Pacific Rim, then I'm all for it.

But if autonomy only enables UH to become even more crusty and inefficient, then I want to know, so I can transfer now.