Letter to the Editor: An Ode to Construction at Tarleton State University

Letter to the Editor: An Ode to Construction at Tarleton State University

Dr. Patrick Stoker, Director of the Academic Resource Center

Oh magic eight ball,

What way shall I go?

If you work at TSU,

That answer is, who knows.

 

Cones and barrels,

And fencing galore?

When will they be done?

Only six months more.

 

We’ve heard it before

From people that balk.

The project is worth

The delays to your walk.

 

The fencing appears

Like a wraith in the night

Blocking your access

To the left and the right.

 

Six months for a sidewalk

Of one hundred yards.

But it will consume the parking spaces

Of six hundred cars.

 

It’s part of expansion,

Progress they say.

But it adds six miles

Of walking each day.

 

For the workers seem

To delight in our pain.

Behind fences they watch

At our hopeless distain.

 

You can see them smile

When a dead end appears

From the fence they erected

When you’re in class with our peers.

 

Now in my email

What is it I see?

Beautification projects

Projected till twenty thirty.

 

Oh magic eight ball

What shall we do?

Contractors have cut power

All across TSU.

 

It’s the end of the term

And everything is due.

As workers shrug

Without even a clue.

 

As if this were enough

A Code Purple we hear,

A gas line was cut

Number six for the year.

 

Evacuations and delays

At the worst time of term

Teachers frantically adjust

As their students just squirm.

 

With progress like this

It’s hard to digest

What the campus will be

By the end of this mess.

 

Elevator you enter

At your own peril

Like riding Niagara

In a rotten oak barrel.

 

If nothing else,

The failures do seem

To train personnel

From the campus Response Team.

 

We hope and pray

As we go home each night.

That this construction will end

Sometime in our life.