“The REC is getting a lazy river, and we are losing buildings,” ceramic junior Patrick LeBas
The University is crumbling around us and so far the administration’s response has been to sit around and wait for the off-chance the Louisiana legislature decides to allocate money to fix our buildings.
And after 14 years, it’s time that we took more drastic steps than “wait-and-see.”
On Saturday, a concrete panel fell from the ceiling of the ceramics building. Had students not been away on Thanksgiving break, there’s a very real chance that someone could have been seriously injured.
The Studio Arts Building, which houses the now-condemned ceramics studio, has been on the waiting list for state funding since 1999.
While the building would have taken only $6 million to repair back then, after neglect for nearly a decade and a half, the bill is up to about $15 million.
Our University is not the well-oiled machine represented on glossy handouts, and we’re still struggling with deferred maintenance to campus buildings that have needed repair since the 1980s.
In February 2012, a chunk of Hill Memorial Library plummeted to the ground, luckily causing no injuries. Other buildings suffer from mold infestations, broken air conditioning and lights that have never been replaced. Often, garbage cans in bathrooms overflow, leading to disgusting trash pileups.
Individually, these problems aren’t the end of the world, but together they create an unhealthy and unsafe atmosphere for students. Spending day after day in dilapidated buildings underneath a roof that could fall at any minute is not the most conducive environment for learning.
And none of this is the fault of Facility Services. The department has a long list of much-needed repairs but is the first to have its budget slashed come time for the annual state cuts to higher education.
Last spring, The Daily Reveille editorial board responded positively to news of the Studio Arts Building’s proposed $12 million renovation of the Engineering Shops, and we hoped it would bring about drastic changes art students and staff needed.
But it’s up to Louisiana’s leaders to allot money to deserving programs and buildings around the state — and they’re not the most supportive of higher education, to say the least.
According to Jason Droddy, director of External Affairs, administrators showed legislators who work with the University around the ceramics studio earlier this year to prompt assistance and move things along, but it seems it’s been about as effective as George W. Bush’s flyover of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
That is to say, we have no new money, except for the negligible amount offered by the new building use fee.
Estimates for repairs are in the multi-millions and rise each year as our buildings sit unassisted.
At this point, it seems we can no longer sit around and wait for the state. It’s time we, the University, took action.
“It’s just like in your home,” Vice Provost and Associate Vice Chancellor and Interim CFO Robert Kuhn told The Daily Reveille in 2012. “If the roof falls in, then you fix the roof. Unfortunately, that’s how deferred maintenance moves to the top of the list.”
Well, Mr. Kuhn, LSU President F. King Alexander and any other administrators or state officials who can help us — the roof fell, and now it’s time to fix it.

Gallery • 3 Photos

Connor Tarter

Sunlight floods through elevated windows Tuesday afternoon inside the Studio Arts Buildings on campus.