I attended the third behind-the-scenes discussion of West Campus system where Mr. Chris VanDruff mainly described his job and talked about some challenges and difficulties of maintaining the buildings, dorms and infrastructure of West Campus. It was a nice and instructional conversation and many students’ questions and concerns got answered.
It’s unbelievable that Mr. VanDruff, together with four more people, took charge of all the maintenance requests we place in West Campus including the main houses and the gothic. I placed one maintenance request on the big light before and it was fixed immediately on the next day, which I really appreciated. It’s not surprising for students to wait since in such a big community where we have dorms, dining, common areas and outside roads, Mr. VanDruff might receive a lot of requests form everywhere, but I’m pretty impressed by the efficiency and good work he and his team did. He talked about how the priority system works which shows that he’s quite professional in dealing with student housing issues. And also it makes me more grateful since he really thinks for students.
Another big part of the conversation is about the security issues in West Campus. I agreed on Professor Garrick Blalock’s point that there’s some issue that the technology cannot fix and we should rely on ourselves, the community to fix these problems. I personally think the entry system with card readers is pretty advanced though we know there’s possibility for strangers coming in. However, we could do thing with the technology part since people are smarter, if someone wants to get in, he or she will find some way using the weakness of the technology. Thus, we should rely on our selves to achieve a safer environment. For example be more alert when somebody is following you into the building and give a call when necessary notifying the campus security.
To conclude, I learn a lot during this conversation. It’s a rare opportunity for students to know the behind-the-scenes issues happening around. Also, it’s great that I can notice some faces on campus who hurried around to make our living area a better place. Thank you.
Soundes like a very interesting talk, sometimes as students, we really tend to overlook the work that people do every day for us to maintain this safe and nice environment. Seeing your post, I wish that I’ve gone to this talk as well!
This was a great talk – it was interesting to learn how Mr. VanDruff and his staff maintain all of West Campus. I definitely appreciate how fast maintenance requests are handled after this talk. I also agree with you that maintaining security involves students being alert.