Letter to the Editor: Campus Center

Dear Editors:

The Campus Center has officially been opened, but what will happen to the Campus Center after the dust has settled and the novelty has worn off? It was filled with people when it opened last Monday and everyone was trying out the new food court, the pool tables, and the lounge on the ground floor. Will it be as utilized in a year's time?

I believe that if the school expects students to really utilize the facilities, the school has to do their part to create a conducive environment for that to happen. Has anyone noticed the prices in the food court? For example $2.25 for a slice of pizza with one toping, $1.50 for a bottle of apple juice, and $1.25 for a bottle of soda. To give you an idea of what that means in relation to stores in the WPI area, Tech Pizza will sell you a small pizza with one topping for $4.15. The same 20 oz bottle of soda can be bought from the vending machine in AK for $1.00 or $0.99 from Tech. The same goes for the apple juice. The best part of it all is that if you go to the Waltham Campus, the vending machines there sell bottles of soda for $0.65!!! In my opinion, this is blatant profiteering on the part of the school and/or Chartwells. How long are they going to hope to keep this up?

I contemplated long and hard about whether to raise this issue because of the fear that instead of bringing the prices in the food court down, they might raise the prices at the vending machines. I think that somebody should take a good hard look at the pricing of food and drink on campus and bring them more in line with reality. I ask not that they lose money by providing food and drink at below cost, but that they at least provide them at a reasonable price. To make cash-strapped college students pay more than is reasonable for food and drink is a more grievous sin than charging exorbitant tuition rates.

So to those of you who are paying close to $6 for lunch at the food court, do think about the option of paying less than a dollar more to go to Morgan Commons. It's the same food and you can have all you want there.

Now I turn to the students. When I saw the nice pool tables, my first reaction was to ask how long they will last. Why the pessimism? In the six years that I have been at WPI, I have seen students commit so many acts of wanton destruction to common property. If generations after us are going to enjoy the facilities that have been provided in the campus center and the campus as a whole, the students have to play their part in taking care not to willfully damage common property. To that end, I wonder if the reason why the main doors into the Campus Center only swing one way. Look at it the next time you walk in. Don't most buildings have a left and right door that each swing in opposite directions? The Campus Center does not. My theory is that they designed the doors that way so that the nice plush couches in the lounge do not walk away in the middle of the night into someone's apartment. I have not verified it with a tape measure but the couches look like they are wider than the doors.

We have a new bookstore and I think it looks really nice. I say "I think" it looks nice because I could not see well enough in lighting that could be cranked up a couple of notches. I am sure that there must be a study done by some underpaid psychology graduate student at some university that shows that a bright store is more welcoming and generates more business than a dimly lit one. Ask yourself when you last walked into a big department store that was as dark as our new bookstore?

Still on the bookstore, I believe that they are selfish in their practices. Just like in the old bookstore, they expect you to leave your bags at the door when you walk in. Obviously they do so because they don't want students stealing their overpriced wares. But do they not have a high-tech security system protecting their store? When you leave your bags at the door, is anyone watching it? What protection do you have against someone walking off with your bag? You might have three $100 books in that bag but you don't have a fancy security system protecting it. Is the bookstore going to be responsible for your loss? I highly doubt it. What they have failed to remember is that we are their customers. Either they provide a check system where they give you a tag when you leave your bag behind the counter, or they let us take our bags into the store. So for your sake, I ask that you insist that you be allowed to bring your bags into the bookstore. They only care about minimizing their losses and not yours. Question the purpose of their security system. Ask them if they will take any responsibility should your bag get stolen.

I wonder how often large meetings are conducted on campus to justify the need for the large circular conference rooms that we have in the Campus Center? Perhaps having more spaces where small groups of students can sit down for a drink (preferably reasonably priced from the food court), chat, or read (perhaps bought from a well-lit bookstore) would have been good. But that's too late, I guess, just like it is too late to change the fact that the mailboxes run in ascending order from left to right. It works the regular way from left to right if you are working inside the mailroom though. Did Spock say that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?

Despite what I have said in this letter, I am not withholding my blessings on the Campus Center. It is a beautiful building and it has the potential to be the focal point of the college but we have to realize that just erecting a building is not enough. It is the people that manage the building, who make the decisions, who work there, and who use the building who have the power to make it happen. My criticism should be seen as my effort to ensure that we do not end up with a white elephant where beautiful rows of trees and lush green grass used grow.