For the last two years, these pages have featured many articles about the Master Plan, most of them negative. Three of the four undergraduate classes have not enjoyed an entire year free from the sound of jackhammers and the peril of construction trucks navigating Homewood's winding roads.
Still, one cannot expect the campus to improve without some inconvenience. The problem is that the nature of the improvements can only be called schizophrenic - not schizophrenic in design or appearance, since the Master Plan turned an already uniform-looking campus into a burgundy-colored wonderland, but two-faced in its effect on undergraduates.
One way of viewing the Master Plan is to think of it as the project that gave us the wonderful new Recreation Center and the Mattin Center. This Master Plan gave the people who spend the most time on campus two shining new facilities in which to work, exercise and socialize. They may not add up to a Student Union, but they reflect a plan that has the best interests of students in mind.
However, there is another side to the Master Plan. This is the side that "beautified" campus by replacing the asphalt walkways with brick that is too tender for the wear and tear of Spring Fair and Commencement.
This is the side that valued bricks and marble over the two events that do the most to unify the student body. Sure, Spring Fair and Commencement will continue, but they have been shunted aside to Garland Field, away from the center of campus. The anonymous donor's quest for campus beautification has denied current and future AMR residents the freshman-year rite of waking up one April morning to the sound of blaring pop music and screaming children. One donor's desire for aesthetic perfection denied graduating seniors the honor of receiving their diplomas in the noble shadow of Gilman Hall, instead relegating them to a tent behind the Cold War-era monstrosity that is Garland Hall.
Depending on your workout preferences and club memberships, the good side of the Master Plan outweighs the bad, but if someone had thought about things like Spring Fair and Commencement in advance, none of this kvetching would be necessary. This week's announcement that Garland Field will host all outdoor campus events was expected, but it wasn't appreciated - say what you will about how the quads look nowadays, designing the walkways to be too weak to support these events was just plain stupid. A school that prides itself on producing competent engineers should be ashamed of such a lack of forethought on the design.
While we're discussing the Master Plan, the spectrograph is another case in which practicality was trumped by misguided aesthetics. For those too young to remember, the spectrograph was a sculpture celebrating a Hopkins invention. It sat at the bottom of the breezeway steps on the Lower Quad, and its wide, flat design and central location lent itself to being a popular place for students to sit and chat when the weather was nice. The spectrograph was a place to meet people, have a cup of coffee, or just to watch the world go by. When the bricks came to the Lower Quad, the spectrograph was removed. While it wasn't immediately evident, the removal was permanent. Why remove such an innocuous and practical piece of public sculpture, only to replace it with mere sod? We had little art on campus as it was.
So, which Master Plan will students remember when they decide whether or not to become the next generation of donors, anonymous and otherwise?
Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The News-Letter.