 "Photo: Kaori Saitoh")
Officials at the University of Hawai‘i announced on Tuesday, Sept. 29, that Gartley Hall will be closed due to long-standing repairs that have been overlooked.
According to a university press release, the hall - next to Dean Hall on Campus Road - is being closed after “recent structural work found that the 88-year-old building had major structural damage, which raised significant questions about the safety of the building.” The entire building is being cleared and closed until further investigation.
Though the press release states that the university was undergoing a survey to renovate Gartley Hall, it remains unknown as to how long these repairs went unnoticed before the survey took place.
Yiyuan Xu, an associate professor in psychology, has been working in the department and in Gartley Hall for six years. Xu said that when he was hired, he was promised a new office and that the hall was going to be renovated.
“It’s frustrating,” Xu said. “We made requests 15 years ago to make renovations, so they knew there were problems - we weren’t the priority.”
Xu said that when the department had a group of outside college reviewers come to evaluate Mānoa’s psychology program, they were supposed to visit the research laboratories in the hall’s basement. The reviewers refused to go down, however, because of the smell.
“We received excellent reviews last year, but one recommendation that a reviewer gave us was to renovate the facility, since they had refused to go down in light of health hazards,” Xu commented.
As professors box up their belongings, they must also put their research projects aside.
“Research will be put on hold, and teaching will be significantly affected,” Xu said.
The approximately 70 to 100 students in the classes taught in Gartley Hall will be relocated. For psychology major McDaniel Martinez, this poses questions about where to go for advising and talking to his professors and teaching assistants.
“Where are we going to go next? As a psychology major, this is where I usually go,” Martinez said. “The main thing is actual offices for the professors. I went upstairs to see my professor and it’s just boxes. It looks like a prison.”
Martinez also noted the condition of a classroom used as a lecture hall.
“It gets very humid and becomes hard to concentrate while in that class,” Martinez said
Classroom space on campus is already restricted and may become a source of irritation for students in the relocated classes and for psychology majors. The renovations that will have to take place will come as a financial blow to the university, which is already in a bind due to recent budget cuts.
“Repairs and maintenance have continued as a high priority for the UH Mānoa campus,” UHM Chancellor Virginia Hinshaw said, “and the situation with Gartley Hall is an unfortunate reminder how critical funding is needed to maintain our buildings for the safety of our staff and students.”
Why build when UH can't maintain the buildings and staff they have?
Across the system, UH faces trimming about $76 million from its annual $470 million budget next year. UH also expects $79 million in cuts in fiscal year 2011.
Yet the current proposal for a new UH campus does not consider the additional strains to UH resources and staff payrolls. How much will maintenance, security, and other necessary expenses drain future UH budgets?
If you went to UHM, you would know of the past building projects that went sour like the bio-med building, the law library, and business building to start with.
Now Gartley Hall!
I was a UH student and recall the shame students felt about these projects. What about the present condition of the undergrad campus where most of the students are?