Letter to the editor: Where is the McInnis facelift?

Dear Editor:

I appreciated reading about the various facelifts around campus; however, I wonder when President Black and members of the Board of the Trustees last walked through McInnis Hall and sat in various classrooms.

The conditions in McInnis are embarrassing. A more appropriate name might be McInnis Warehouse. On the first day of classes I saw the following: nine chairs and three filing cabinets in the hallway on the second floor, by the elevator; on the other side, there were two large recycling bins and several boxes containing new catalogs; on the first floor there was a rack of chairs in the hallway and, as usual, the foyer of McInnis seems to be a storage closet for tables.

In addition to items being stored in hallways, in one of the classrooms in which I taught the cover of the heating/AC unit was sitting on the floor, and in another there was no table. And outdated TVs and VCR/DVD players remain.

Aesthetics matter. A well-kept up, aesthetically pleasing campus helps keep morale up and conveys the message that we care. Who is paying attention to the appearance of McInnis? Yes, we are resource-limited, but how much money would it cost to have had someone check each classroom to make sure all lights were working, that covers on heating/AC units were not off, and that items had been stored behind closed doors? And why are the doors in McInnis painted red and not burgundy, a university color?

For commencement, on May 8, paper decorations were hung from the ceiling in the foyer of McInnis in anticipation that some people might have had to watch the ceremony in the auditorium. In mid- June, the decorations were still there, looking increasingly drab. I couldn’t stand it anymore and took them down. I hope that admissions did not take any prospective students and their parents through McInnis while those decorations hung limply from the ceiling.

Who is paying attention and taking ownership for the appearance of McInnis Hall, a.k.a., McInnis Warehouse?

Sincerely,

Kathryn A. Lee, Ph.D., J.D.

Professor and Chair

Department of Political Science