After spending a year and over $100 million renovating the library, it's ridiculous that the school is unable to repair or replace the centrally located gate on the third floor. It's extremely difficult to repair the highly unique door, the opening of which is triggered by lasers. The gate's repair would require a specialist being flown in from Canada.

Let's just get rid of the gate.

What's the point of putting in futuristic gates if they don't work? This is becoming something of a trend at Seattle U. The administration seems unwilling or uninterested in funding basic maintenance projects. Campus is full of faulty air conditioning systems and bathroom fixtures. Essential projects, like replacing the Campion elevators, need to be made a priority. It's clear that the university has the funds. Projects like the library renovation, the Eisminger Fitness Center

addition and the Douglas show an abundance of money. It also shows mismanagement of those funds.

The university needs to stop making any major expansions to campus and redirect those funds to more pressing repair needs. Last year, maintenance had a budget of $2.7 million. This budget has to cover any and all repair projects undertaken by the department. This budget isn't nearly enough to cover all the necessary repairs each year, so maintenance projects are deferred year after year.

The total cost of these deferred repairs is over $100 million. That means that the entire maintenance budget for the next 30 years wouldn't cover the repair costs.

Let's stop spending millions on new buildings and programs and simply repair our elevators.