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Brandeis has an ugly campus.
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There, I said it. No 'ifs,' 'ands' or 'buts.' No soft-pedaling or apologetic qualifications. Brandeis has an ugly campus.
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I'm not talking about the eclectic architectural style of our campus. Some people may like it, others may not yet, either way, that's not exactly something the university can change.
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What I'm talking about is basic, routine campus maintenance. For reasons I do not understand, Brandeis has the money and resources to build beautiful new buildings all over campus and buy new furniture for the Shapiro Campus Center and Olin-Sang, but we can't seem to concern ourselves with the simple campus upkeep that would make Brandeis a more attractive place to live and learn. Let me offer you a catalogue of the kind of thing I'm talking about. Multiple signs on campus are missing letters and have been missing them for years. When students head to Sherman Dining Hall to eat, they are greeted with a sign welcoming them to the "Sherman Student Cent r." After the arduous trek up the Rabb steps, students find themselves staring at a sign for the "Olin-Sang Civil zat on Center."
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The brick fa?ssade on each of the chapels is literally crumbling. The front of Harlan Chapel looks as if the building has been abandoned for years.
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For my entire four years at Brandeis, several bricks have been missing from a corner of the Usdan Student Center.
Broken glass windows in the castle have been carelessly replaced with blocks of wood.
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Buildings all over campus have missing or broken ceiling tiles for months at a time. It seems as if it takes weeks to replace light bulbs that have burnt out in the SCC library. Paint has been ripped off part of the wall in the Mandel Humanities Center. Our campus is littered with trash.
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I could go on and on.
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"So what?" you ask. These are mostly small imperfections on a large campus, the kinds of things you barely notice day-to-day. Besides, who cares about aesthetics? After all, Brandeis certainly has plenty of things going for it other than the campus aesthetics.
There are, however, a great many reasons this unwillingness to maintain the beauty of our campus should concern both administrators and students alike.
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First of all, we students spend a lot of time here. The vast majority of us live on campus. And you know what, it's nice to live somewhere that looks nice. Given the vast sum of money we all pay to spend four years at Brandeis, it seems living on an aesthetically pleasing campus is the least we can expect.
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But there is an even more important reason we should care about how our campus looks. It's simply embarrassing to present the Brandeis campus to prospective students and their families. No matter how much we touch up the campus' appearance in our brochures and on the website, people come here and they take tours. And it would be near impossible for them not to notice how little Brandeis seems to care about how we present ourselves.
Don't believe me? Take a look at some comments from online forums discussing college admissions I found.
"My husband took my daughter to visit. They called it 'the projects.' My husband wanted to leave as soon as they got there."
"I have heard negatives regarding Brandeis' 'ugly' campus." "I applied to Brandeis before I visited. If I knew how sad looking the campus was, I would have never applied."
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Again, this is just a small sampling.
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For prospective students, should their college choice come down to a decision between Brandeis and one of our peer universities (e.g. Tufts University, Wesleyan University, Boston College), campus appearance could be a deciding factor. If the Brandeis administration does not seem to care about the University's dumpy appearance, it signals to a prospective student that the administration is unwilling to put in minimal effort to maintain a beautiful environment in which students can spend their time. It makes Brandeis look lazy and unserious.
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These maintenance issues are small and easy to fix. It would take minutes to replace the few missing bricks in Usdan. I can't imagine that replacing the missing letters all over campus would be so expensive. How hard would it be to be a little more prompt at fixing leaking pipes and replacing old ceiling tiles?
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The administration should make sure that members of our maintenance staff are consistently monitoring wear and tear all throughout the campus. Repairs should happen as quickly as possible and not wait until breaks or Admitted Students Day. In fact, if there is no one on the maintenance staff who can do this competently, I'll volunteer to personally take Vice President Andrew Flagel or Dean Rick Sawyer around the campus, pointing out exactly what ought to have been repaired years ago.
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Brandeis is a wonderful university. The students here are friendly, outgoing and ambitious. Our academics are top-notch. A school as wonderful as Brandeis deserves to be housed on a campus with a physical beauty that reflects Brandeis' greatness.
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