2008 Woodie Awards
Point-Counterpoint
Elevator woes: ineffective response
Skyler Silvertrust
Issue date: 5/5/06 Section: Opinions & Editorials
- Page 1 of 1
Fact: Stairs are hard. Yet, stairs were the only option left for Sage Hall residents when the elevator was shut down for student use due to recent vandalism in the building. A small fire and some incidents of graffiti in the Sage elevator were not the only episodes of vandalism reported across campus this past term.
While students within the Lawrence community generally have ample respect for authority and for personal or private property, campus vandalism is not a new occurrence. However, even the most extreme measures taken by the administration have been largely ineffective at curtailing the problem.
Closing the elevator to student use only attracted more attention to the problem itself. This temporary solution proved its futility when incidents of vandalism persisted in the Sage stairwell and other locations. A few days after the elevator had been turned off in early April, someone had written on a stairwell wall in dry erase marker: "I didn't write in the elevator but I'm writing in the stairs."
More shockingly, an unattended fire occurred in the stairwell, a previously unlikely place for vandalism. In effect, turning off the elevator only exacerbated the problem by diverting the vandalism to other areas of the building.
When faced with the problem of campus vandalism, any administration must determine the best way to pursue such an issue. If authorities were truly concerned with the seriousness of the problem, they would have, at the very least, conducted an investigation.
Turning off the elevator did little to actually solve the problem or determine the culprits of the vandalism. While the efforts of the administration in this matter may have been well intentioned, their solution ultimately worsened the problem by dispelling vandalism to the stairwell and other areas.
Every Sage Hall resident was charged for the unclaimed damages that occurred in the building, a regulation stipulated for in the housing contract. Yet, it is patently unfair to charge only Sage residents when the vandal could have just as easily been a student from another dorm or a person unaffiliated with the university itself.
Instead, if students are to be charged at all for damages, all university students in all dorms should be charged equally. It has been reiterated by authorities that students who step forward with information about the vandalism could help quash the charges, yet, residents in the hall have no obligation to take investigation of the matters into their own hands.
In both the suspension of the elevator and in charging only Sage residents for the damages, campus authorities demonstrated an extreme lack of effectiveness at curtailing the problem of vandalism across campus.
While students within the Lawrence community generally have ample respect for authority and for personal or private property, campus vandalism is not a new occurrence. However, even the most extreme measures taken by the administration have been largely ineffective at curtailing the problem.
Closing the elevator to student use only attracted more attention to the problem itself. This temporary solution proved its futility when incidents of vandalism persisted in the Sage stairwell and other locations. A few days after the elevator had been turned off in early April, someone had written on a stairwell wall in dry erase marker: "I didn't write in the elevator but I'm writing in the stairs."
More shockingly, an unattended fire occurred in the stairwell, a previously unlikely place for vandalism. In effect, turning off the elevator only exacerbated the problem by diverting the vandalism to other areas of the building.
When faced with the problem of campus vandalism, any administration must determine the best way to pursue such an issue. If authorities were truly concerned with the seriousness of the problem, they would have, at the very least, conducted an investigation.
Turning off the elevator did little to actually solve the problem or determine the culprits of the vandalism. While the efforts of the administration in this matter may have been well intentioned, their solution ultimately worsened the problem by dispelling vandalism to the stairwell and other areas.
Every Sage Hall resident was charged for the unclaimed damages that occurred in the building, a regulation stipulated for in the housing contract. Yet, it is patently unfair to charge only Sage residents when the vandal could have just as easily been a student from another dorm or a person unaffiliated with the university itself.
Instead, if students are to be charged at all for damages, all university students in all dorms should be charged equally. It has been reiterated by authorities that students who step forward with information about the vandalism could help quash the charges, yet, residents in the hall have no obligation to take investigation of the matters into their own hands.
In both the suspension of the elevator and in charging only Sage residents for the damages, campus authorities demonstrated an extreme lack of effectiveness at curtailing the problem of vandalism across campus.
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