UNC's Master Plan Cheapens Today's University Experience

On this weekend, my hall mates and I were forced to one of three options for the weekend. First, don't shower and smell funky at all the parties. Second, shower in that water they seem to ship in straight from the Arctic. Seriously, when you turned on the faucet, you got hit with ice-cubes. Third, beg a friend either on or off campus to use their shower like a normal, decent human being.

Needless to say, the Department of Housing kept all of its residents less than informed about the situation. Officials in the area office said this weekend, "We have someone working on the problem, but we don't know what the problem is, or when it might be fixed."

Gee, that's a huge help, guys.

I bring out an example like this because it shows glaring problems in the on-campus housing situation.

The Department of Housing and the University's Master Plan don't factor in the needs of captive undergraduate residents. They seem more interested in creating wonderful modern buildings that look good in recruitment brochures than having a functional campus. UNC might as well stand for Under Never-ending Construction.

Don't get me wrong; when I graduate I'll look back on these four years as some of the best of my life.

But the way the University has chosen to expand during my time here is an embarrassment at best and degrading at worst.

I'm thoroughly convinced me and few buddies could have trained a drunken monkey to write a better Master Plan than the one that exists now.

My freshman year in Morrison Residence Hall was an enriching experience. I learned that if you live close enough to a street being torn up, you don't need an alarm clock to wake up -- just keep your window open until the jackhammers start up at 6:45 a.m.

Sophomore year we found out the Student Union really isn't for students but for expansion. After all, it's not the quality of the school; it's how nice the Union looks in those brochures.

Many of us also learned that buildings like the Undergraduate Library with a certain charm were meant to be gutted in favor of newer and nicer.

The Master Plan seems to be bent on change for the sake of change, regardless of how productive it might be.

UNC's own Master Plan Web site remarks how the plan must maintain the aesthetic beauty of campus, yet all I see whenever I'm on campus these days are traffic barrels, chain link fences and more gutted buildings than you can shake a stick at.

I think many members of these planning committees would be much more cautious about these ambitious projects if they didn't have the ability to get in their cars and drive home from this place every evening.

But students don't have that option.

Every on-campus resident of the past four years has had to tolerate what any rational person would consider excessive and needless construction in the name of progress. Is it really progress when I spend a semester with a backhoe starting its work at 7 a.m. every day for three months while my room is a scant 30 feet away?

So, I'd like to make a proposal for anyone and everyone in the University administration who can do something about this. Give on-campus students a partial refund for any and all construction projects that have placed needless noise, distraction, inconvenience and frustration in their lives.

Out of all the wrongs that have been committed on UNC students these past four years -- the retroactive tuition increases, the empty Jumbotron promises and the kidnapping of our basketball program to a far-away place -- it's time the University gave something back to us.

And they should start with the hot water.

Thanks for the comments about sorority stereotypes; I got lots of laughs out of them. Send construction horror stories to rauch@email.unc.edu.