It’s 9 a.m. on a sunny, Thursday morning and students are usually in class learning while listening to the soft chirps of birds as they fly across the sky. Instead of a normal morning on campus for students and staff, our morning is filled with the high pitched squeals of drills and vibrations throughout the Fain building.

My class ended early today and it wasn’t due to a catastrophic event or safety concern rather the construction madness.

For the past few weeks, students haven’t had access to the D-wing entrance of the Fain building because of the construction and it has caused an inconvenience for everyone. I believe there is a lack of consideration for class time and the need for students to not have to walk from the other side of the building to get to their classes. This has caused a disturbance in classes and as a result professors can’t hear themselves teach important material and having to end their classes early because the noise becomes a distraction for their students. This takes away from the quality of education that students are suppose to be provided with each and everyday.

With students not having access to the entrance of the D-wing, there are a few safety concerns I have:

• The construction workers have placed a few bricks in the grass connecting the D-wing to the quad. The bricks are poorly placed there for students to walk on and it’s a safety hazard. Someone could accidentally trip and fall while trying to walk on them.
• There is no caution sign present to warn anyone who walks on these bricks to be careful.
• This isn’t safe for anyone who is handicap. There is no smooth route for handicap students to get to and from the Fain building unless they take a longer route from the other side of the building.
• Speaking on behalf of commuter students, we don’t have immediate access to our vehicles due to a huge fence that wraps around the entire D-wing. So help us all if we forget not to park in the commuter lot across from the building because we will have to take an extra five minutes to get to class because of the construction blocking everyone off.

Students and professors weren’t informed of the construction before it started, and I believe we should have received a heads-up about it so everyone could plan accordingly. I hope the madness stops soon because no one is happy about this and we’re tired of having to be on the constructions time frame. We pay thousands of dollars to take classes that we can’t conveniently learn in because of the drills and vibrations rather than peace and quiet.