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February 28, 2008
Tar Heel Blues.
The law school is bordered on two of three sides by athletic fields -- one a practice field for the football team; the other a field for the field hockey and lacrosse teams.
For weeks now, the field hockey/lacrosse field -- a synthetic astroturf field that was regularly watered (!) through the fall notwithstanding the region's record-setting drought -- has been under some sort of radical reconstruction. And so trucks and service vehicles for that project constantly clog the adjacent parking lot, which (in theory, at least) is supposed to serve the law school.
And now a major portion of the law school's parking is off-limits because of a multi-day indoor track meet. Guards stand at the entrance to all of the law school lots and wave faculty, staff, and students away because of the needs of the Athletics Program.
The result of all of this (and other athletic events that routinely claim the law school's grounds for their purposes) is periodic turmoil for the School of Law. I myself came within about 3 minutes of having to cancel my Constitutional Law class this morning because the guard refused to allow me to enter. Faculty members are being pointed to specific spaces where they will be permitted to park in a lot that's supposed to be open to us all (and where we pay for the privilege of parking). Faculty members who can't get in are idling their cars and reading at the steering wheel, waiting for permission to enter their own workplace. Faculty members coming to the office for research and writing and class preparation on the weekends are often being turned away to make room for sports events.
It's bad enough that the law school will have to relocate to a satellite property two miles from campus in order to grow, rather than simply occupying a contiguous piece of the open acreage that surrounds the law school and that spends most of each day vacant and unused. Perhaps there's some sense in a university's disconnecting its law school from the rest of its campus in deference to field hockey. I confess that I don't see it.
But it's just absurd to frustrate an academic unit's core missions of teaching and research in order to open up some prime parking for a track meet.
When I arrived here ten years ago, the law school was in the midst of construction on an expansion project that took years to complete. Our next-door neighbor, the School of Government, also sat mired in construction that lasted for years on end. But when the football team needed an indoor practice facility, an enormous building -- the Eddie Smith Field House -- sprang up virtually overnight in the shadow of the School of Law and the School of Government.
I suppose that episode should have taught me all I needed to know about the position of athletics in the university power structure. But I guess I'd forgotten. Our current situation is reminding me.
Posted by Eric at February 28, 2008 3:08 PM