This Nonsense I Noticed at the New Business School

You can't hear the administration talk about the new business school without hearing the words "green" or "beautiful." The school is meant to be a recruiting tool as well as make the campus look nicer over the course of the next few years. Many people debate whether or not we need new buildings, I personally believe that we need more academic buildings since we're so strapped for space as it is (with the exception of the frivolous athletics center... we're DIVISION THREE for chrissake). Yet with all these new wonderous buildings I have to ask myself, how much fiscal responsibility is the school excercising... and how much of this is really just a facade to attract new students?

I walked into the business school yesterday to see the most blatantly offensive use of money by this institution to date. Everything that is done has a reason to some extent, but not this. The coffee counter at the business school uses three HDTV plasma screens to display the menu options, and nothing else. Are they serious? I can't really wrap my head around this hypocritical joke of a display. This is wrong on two levels.

One: Why the hell would they spend $1500+ dollars for a screen, let alone three, to display how much my cheese danish is going to cost? The school has plenty of useless HDTV screens everywhere, but at least they run dynamic powerpoint presentations that must be informative to someone... this is just nonsense. Our tuition is going up every year, and in return we can look at televisions instead of a giant plastic menu billboard.

Two: This is green? This building that is supposed to be so energy efficient as if under the foundation its making love the earth with its giant recycled-steel appendage! So we're going to waste energy on powering three televisions. Never mind the fact that we're running low on iridium (a crucial ingredient in the world of computing), or the carbon emissions associated with producing more of these things... this looks ritzy for students entering the school. What a load of bullshit.

Oh, and these televisions won't last long. Since their background is white, and they never change, and they are on all day, they'll likely start to color-burn very quickly, branding an outline of the words "Cheese Danish $1.39" on it for all eternity.

I think we all deserve an answer as to why in the sam hell anyone would spend this kind of money and waste energy on this nonsense.