Le Provocateur

Issue date: 9/15/04 Section: Viewpoint

Ever hop onto an elevator around campus? Did you feel safe in that wobbly box?

To be honest, I don't think you have reason to feel safe in the elevators of Assumption College. Taking that step from the stationary to the moveable is always taking a risk, but on campus, these stakes rise.

Hop onto an Assumption elevator and you have less than a fifty-percent chance that that elevator has been routinely checked. Of the seven campus elevators that I've visited only two have accompanied appropriate inspection stickers. Yes, only two. The lucky winners: the library and West Hall. The unfortunate losers without stickers: Fuller Hall, South Hall, Hagan Campus Center, the IT Center, and the Living and Learning Center.

Fuller's expiration: February 5, 2003.

South: February 2, 2003.

Hagan: April 30, 2002

IT: December 10, 2002

LLC: No idea. No visible documentation exists.

Not just one, but multiple years have passed without updating these modes of floor-to-floor transportation, which are vital for some. In addition to the outdated inspections, are the rickety door openings (especially in Fuller) and the quite often randomly ringing emergency bells also pose problems. No one may have recently been entrapped within these oxygen-deficient boxes, but why wait for the worst? With an over thirty thousand dollar tuition, don't we deserve to feel safe riding from one floor to another?

Take the stairs, one may say. I usually do and prefer to, but what about those who cannot? On that same topic, why exactly do the handicapped rooms in North, South, and West lie on the second or third floors where elevators cannot be used in the emergency of a fire?

Speaking of emergencies, did you know that not all campus emergency call boxes actually work? In an emergency, you will have to hope you picked the right one. I guess we are lucky though that they aren't ripped out of their stands like last year.

Their strategic placement is bewildering. In the Village, there are three, but in the eerie walk back from the science building to the Village, I could not find one. I could only find multiple unlit lights.

With an intimate, enclosed campus on the outskirts of the city, we know that we don't go to school in the scariest of all places. For that reason, an attention to both outdoor and indoor security seems to unintentionally slip through the cracks, especially when the key phrase "I'm just picking someone up" will get anyone past the gate.

There's no more reason to feel afraid than there's ever been, but there may be reason to question the safety of our "safety" measures. With a closer look, everything could certainly warrant a tune-up.

Senior

English

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