Flashes of Panic

So, it looks like the College has found its annual spring controversy.

By definition, the Spring Controversy is something (relatively) harmless that the student body can get worked up about as spring arrives and they stop worrying about freezing to death on their way to the library. In my time, it was things like a (deliberately) shocking (but, apparently, not terribly artistic) play being performed in the only consecrated chapel on campus, which then required re-consecration, an alleged homophobic hate crime in the dorms and the alleged whitewash that followed, stuff like that. Given that I only remember two from my four years, and so far as I know all directly affected by those two have gone on to productive lives (I found a link for the hate crime victim a few months ago, but won’t post it here for obvious reasons,) for the most part we made mountains out of molehills.

Now they’ve found something that actually has real-world consequences. The ongoing dorm construction on campus is about to collide with the increasing number of cars on campus (not surprisingly, more students have cars on campus now than when I was there, even though not that much time has passed.) In a note on the faculty services page, the Facilities Planning and Management director explains that faculty will be taking over the Alumni Lot (so named because it is next to Alumni House, a vestigal little building used only for functions and receptions) and displacing student parking. And they propose creating a new lot behind the tennis courts to handle the student overflow.

Since the space in question is currently woods known as the “Bird Sanctuary,” you can imagine that this has created a little uproar. Yes, they’re proposing to pave Paradise to put in a parking lot.

There’s a lot involved here.

• There’s a student lot (Hills Lot) which is barely ever close to full. It’s just difficult to get to, because it’s on the other side of an active rail line.

• The cross-country course goes through the bird sanctuary. I have noticed a number of runners in the discussion.

• One good discussion that has been sparked is the, “How many of us really need cars on such a tiny campus, anyway” discussion. I doubt it will have any lasting consequences unless the students back administration restrictions on students having cars on campus, which they probably won’t.

• There’s already a small, “temporary” (unpaved) parking lot back there, under the power lines that pass through the bird sanctuary, where contractors park. The change is: expansion, pavement, 24 hour lighting.

• Another side discussion: why was most of the notification aimed at faculty, and not students? (I can’t say that I’m too wound about that myself; there has been no notification to the community, which we can’t really scream about, but we also can’t graduate and go elsewhere.)

• There’s a lot of land back there, but a lot of it is swampy. It’s not the wildlife that we’re concerned about, apparently, so much as our ability to go out and walk around with the wildlife.

I can’t honestly see any resolution other than the students, as a body, saying, “We’re willing to give up this, this, and this convenience in order to preserve this open space.” And I’m a little too cynical to expect that outcome. For one thing, the time frame is too short. By the time they’re ready to make a decision, it will be time to go home for the summer, and next fall they will have forgotten it all happened. Except for the cross-country team, which will have to re-route their course (again).

Side effect of all this: I’ve discovered that, as a user of the alumni mail system, I have access to “Planworld,” a sort of community bulletin board which could be comprehensibly explained to an alum of my vintage but would be hopelessly confusing to anyone else, I suspect. I had previously thought it was limited to current members of the college community.