USC is not adequately addressing renovations needs of our campus
The Issue: As the university renovates its outdated buildings, there's concern that some facilities are being left behind
One of the things that attracted me to USC the most on my prospective visit was the old, Southern feel the campus has maintained. We all enjoy the historic Horseshoe, as well as other historical buildings and sights, but some of the infrastructure on campus can hardly be deemed charming in its old, dilapidated condition.
While new buildings like the Darla Moore School of Business and the recently renovated Patterson Hall rise quickly with new, hotel-like décor, others like the residence halls of the women’s quad and the Thomson Student Health Center are left as they stand.
Living in McClintock Hall last year, I attended a talk from a speaker who had lived in our dorm in the ’60s. She noted that aside from the technological additions, it looked almost exactly the same. While nostalgic for her, it’s almost laughable that the university hasn’t improved on it since then.
In fact, during my first dorm orientation, the Resident Mentors warned us to avoid setting the fire alarm off because the water in the sprinklers was from when the building was constructed. While that could have been a white lie they used to save us all a lot of trouble, the entire dorm was in disrepair. A bathroom on my floor had a ceiling tile cave into the shower, and it stayed like that, with a gaping hole, for months.
Though money was allocated to fix the ceiling in Russell House over the summer, and Thomas Cooper Library’s ceiling this spring, disrepair still surrounds the Thomson Student Health Center, and construction on a new building won’t start until late this year at the earliest. While money is being pumped into a new business building, existing buildings are forgotten.
We have new machines in the Strom Thurmond Wellness and Fitness Center that help increase energy efficiency and a Net Zero rating ready to be slapped onto the Darla Moore building — both great starts to a more energy-efficient USC. If these changes are saving as much money as they boast, maybe leftover dough can be allocated to buildings with less funding like the women’s quad dorms, the Student Health Center, or the often-forgotten Hamilton College that flooded multiple classrooms and offices last year during a rainstorm.
It’s exhausting thinking of all the places the money could go, a task the people in control of the funds are facing all the time. If the campus is becoming as energy efficient as it proclaims, let’s see some of that money and energy put back into the existing campus buildings.