Click Here to see a gallery of decaying parts of campus.
 
Students will start seeing less day-to-day maintenance and slower response times as budget cuts to Facility Services, the campus organization responsible for the University’s upkeep, manifest.
 
“So far, the impacts have been horizontal — taken a little bit everywhere,” said Tony Lombardo, interim assistant vice chancellor for Facility Services. “You start seeing the aging process accelerating.”
 
Lombardo says the department has faced about $3 million in cuts since Hurricane Katrina.
 
That translates into about 70 lost positions – while most of those lost are vacant positions left unfilled, the department had to let nine employees go in January. Those mostly included field staff, but some lower administrative personnel were let go, as well.
 
As Facility Services continues to lose money and staff, projects administrators would like to complete remain unfunded. As those projects remain unfunded, they fall further into disrepair, making them more expensive.
 
Lombardo said continued funding losses could mean students will start seeing problems.
 
While students may not be able to point to specific buildings on campus that are falling into disrepair, Lombardo says future cuts could conceivably mean increasingly obvious decay. That could happen as early as next year when the University will have to deal with cuts as high as $73.5 million.
 
“That’s when you’ll really start to see problems,” Lombardo said.
Paul Favaloro, director of Resource Services, said students will start to see daily sustainability efforts, like custodial and landscaping work, start to dwindle.
 
“[The University] is a big city, and it’s going to get harder to take care of it,” he said.
 
Buildings and restrooms will be cleaned less frequently. The trees, bushes, and grass will be trimmed less regularly.
 
“We’re not going to let the Parade Ground turn into a jungle —      although other parts of campus may,” Favaloro said.
 
Favaloro also said his department will be able to respond less quickly to breakdowns in equipment. For example, if the air conditioning in a classroom is defunct, workers may take longer to fix the problem.
 
Deferred maintenance is part of the growing list of construction and repair projects the University has put off for lack of funds. The list currently stands at $375 million, according to Emmett David, director of Facility Development.
 
The state gives the University funds annually to do some of the work on the list, but David says those funds are woefully inadequate. For example — the Legislature most recently allotted $8 million, which doesn’t even make up for inflation on the total $375 million.
 
Many students say they haven’t noticed any significant disrepair on campus.
 
“It’s a lot nicer than the school I came from,” said Christina Thomas, biology freshman. “Of course, I came from Baton Rouge High, and they’ve scheduled that building for demolition.”
 
Others say they’ve noticed problems with the landscaping and custodial work.
 
“There’s a few places on the little side-quads where the branches are low, and I sometimes run into them,” said Chelsea Ward, biology freshman.
 
Jobe Authement, mechanical engineering junior, knows immediately a place that needs work. “Lockett Hall – that’s it, man,” he said. “The bathrooms are really bad.”
 
Whatever students’ complaints, Favaloro says things could get significantly uglier — literally.
 
“It’s like the show ‘Life Without People,'” Favaloro said, referring to a History Channel show that projects what the world would look like if humans suddenly disappeared. “If I could get somebody to use our campus for that, I’d be able to show people what could eventually happen.”
 
 
 
—-
Contact Matthew Albright at [email protected]