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We whine, you read

There’s a new feature on the Gazette’s pages called “The Fixer.” Associate editor Arden Zwelling is accepting student complaints on what needs to be fixed on campus. A broken light here, a waste of energy there. To get things started, we’re presenting our own list of gripes about problems we’ve seen around campus.

Keeping with yesterday’s cover story, one of the blue emergency phones is broken near the Health Sciences Building. While the university is installing a new one nearby, fixing this one would be the obvious first step.

Cell phones are a good replacement if there’s a real emergency, but with the number of dead zones around campus, getting a signal could be a problem. How else can we remove ourselves from the real world if our BBM is unusable?

Trying to communicate is not just a problem for cell phones. The University’s insistence on using the dated, archaic and seemingly pop-up powered WebCT for courses is baffling. Has anyone ever figured out how to use that thing? Right now, professors have trouble getting information to students and students can’t access it without pulling their hair out in the process.

Classroom changes also need to be communicated faster, be it through a notification system or a simple email. This is especially problematic on the first day of lectures, when diligent students with printed out class schedules in hand are left waiting at the wrong door.

And c’mon Western — be a pal and just build that stupid bus shelter outside of the University Community Centre already. Too many frigid nights are spent outside the UCC losing sensation in extremities while waiting for a late night bus in the rain, cold and snow. Students have asked for this shelter for years and it’s a topic at every USC presidential election — take the hint.

Of course, there’s always the under-caffeinated students having to deal with an excruciating line up for the Tim Horton’s on the main floor of the UCC. It’s baffling given the number of Tim Horton’s around campus that the highest volume location has the fewest cashiers.

But students can’t complain when you consider the loyal Spoke — mere steps away serving fair trade coffee that puts the murky, coffee-like water they serve at Tim Horton’s to shame. Students line up for hours for their Timmy’s fix but ignore the poor girl reading a Biology textbook at the Spoke with no one to serve.

Speaking of folks with lots of beans — see what we did there? — that new Ivey building will sure look pretty but what, exactly, is wrong with the current one? Perhaps we could invest our millions into a shuttle bus service between Western and the affiliates that doesn’t get you to campus five minutes late for class.

See something broken? Get it fixed! Email The Fixer at thefixer@westerngazette.ca

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