Construct this

I don’t know if you’ve meandered through the southeastern residential neighborhood recently, but if you have then you know there is a veritable labyrinth of construction.

Since the beginning of the school year I’ve been treated to the pleasant, nay melodic, sounds of jackhammers jackhammering away, of hammers and powertools, of trucks backing up and the clang of metal on metal and metal on concrete and basically metal on anything that they happen to hit it against.

What’s even better is that sometimes it’s in the middle of the night. Or at least 5 a.m., which is equivalent to the middle of the night for college.

I’ve never set foot inside Forest Quad’s cafeteria, nor its C-Store. Instead, Forest residents circle around back to Wilkie Quad, a good ten minute walk there and back not including the actual shopping through which we have to navigate the beginnings of what is supposed to be a new apartment complex.

Then there’s the ever fun amusement park ride of dodge-the-mud-spray as I walk down Third Street, or past Reed Center, as cranes and trucks dislodge dirt and muck and dump it into the road.

And if you wanted to go to the mall last semester? Forget about it. There was so much wayward traffic and broken stoplights and piles of grime and concrete that it made a quick trip to pick up bagels a maze akin to Dante’s Inferno and just not worth the effort.
Which is great, since from what I can see they basically broke the road up, ground it down, and then put it back exactly the way it was before. It just looks more asphalt-y. And the paint’s new.

And now, I step outside of Forest Quad and have to maneuver past moving bulldozers, chain link fences and giant holes in the ground — holes which, from what I can tell, they filled with some sort of plaster mix that just made the sidewalk all lumpy.

It’s reasonable, I think, to want to improve our school. It’s reasonable to start construction projects on new buildings and renovation projects on old ones, especially because IU’s student population is growing, and fast.

But it’s unreasonable to prevent students from living a peaceful life here on campus.
Hectic, inconsistent construction schedules prevent us from studying, keep us distracted and force us out of our dorm rooms, rooms that we are supposed to be using, that we paid good money to use.

It makes getting a meal a time-consuming task. It makes going anywhere an annoyance. It makes studying difficult.

In short, I don’t know who you are who started all this construction. I don’t have money. But I do have a very special set of skills. And if I have to dodge one more blind bulldozer, I’m going to find you. And I’m going to shake my finger at you.

Sternly.

­— ewenning@indiana.edu