Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Some students and faculty have found recent construction on campus to be severely disruptive to classes, though no one has made any formal complaints to the University.
Contributed photo
The Northeast corner of Blake Hall has become a loud construction site, constantly disrupting classes on the lower levels of the building. The severity of the noise has sparked complaints from students and faculty.
An air conditioning repair project on the east side of Blake Hall has caused loud pounding and drilling during the day. The noise level has been a distraction to Valerie Shands, St. Louis, Mo. junior, who is taking a Constitutional Law class in Blake Hall.
“It has affected my learning,” she said. “I cannot concentrate when someone is drilling. It sounds like the entire room is going to cave in on my head.”
Brent Steele, associate professor of political science, had to yell instructions across the room of his International Ethics class because the hammering and drilling was so loud.
When his class attempted to have discussion, the noise overpowered the voices, he said. Steele finally walked outside to ask the construction workers to stop the drilling until the end of class.
“They were extremely reasonable and I was sympathetic to them because they had a job to do and here was this professor coming out kind of laying down the law,” he said. “And so it ended up working out okay, but I know that I’m not the only one that’s had some of these issues with trying to run a class while construction is going on.”
Jim Modig, campus director of Design and Construction Management, said the University usually tried to take classes into consideration when undergoing loud projects.
“We have to look at that on a case-by-case basis,” he said.
Modig said that some projects, like replacing windows or other demolition projects, were done during the summer months, and that heating and cooling problems were typically addressed the season before they were needed. He said the University would modify construction schedules based on the location of a project. For instance, a project in Wescoe Hall, where there is high “classroom utilization,” would be limited to non-school hours. He said the University always took classes into consideration and tried to adjust the work schedule accordingly.
Modig said he wasn’t aware of the noise disturbance in Blake Hall because no formal complaints had been raised about the construction there.
“Based on that, I would go back to my office and my staff and ask the question whether they’ve heard any problems and follow up on that,” he said. “And I’d make sure that, if we have problems, to make those adjustments now versus waiting for a complaint.”
Steele said he understood the importance of reconstruction at the University and was glad for the funds to do it, but he said there needed to be consideration for the students and teachers.
“This is an academic institution, and I saw that the construction was, at least, compromising what we were all trying to do,” he said.
Neither Steele nor Shands made formal complaints. Steele recognized that it was probably cheapest and most efficient to do construction work during the day. Whether it was worth it to disrupt learning, however, was still an important question, he said.
Shands said the noise was so bad once that her teacher almost canceled the rest of class. Because of the severity of the issue, she said, the problem needed to be taken seriously.
“I think it should be addressed,” she said. “I don’t think they should be able to do that sort of construction during class hours.”
Modig said he would talk to his staff and make any necessary adjustments to be less disruptive. But he emphasized that, without a complaint, it was difficult to know what construction sites caused a noise problem.
— Edited by Jacob Muselmann
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