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The many adventures of higher education in the Barstow building
By Teresa Dickert
Opinion Editor
I speak now on behalf of us communication majors who often learn in the loneliest building on campus, the Barstow building. Known to many as that "long walk" one block away from most of the campus action, the Barstow building has become "home" to many a communication student at one time or another. Unfortunately, this home has issues.
Our home comes heated, but oh my god does it ever! Even in the balm of summer, those heaters in each room of Barstow pour out their loving heat. Suffering through class, for both professor and students, in an atmosphere more akin to losing weight ala sauna style than learning is a challenge indeed.
It is hard to imagine opening windows and turning on fans in a room of education in the dead of winter, but these acts are hardly unfamiliar to Barstow building patrons. According to Dr. Joseph Hemmer, professor of communication, the issue of heaters running erratically all year round in Barstow has been known for years, but nothing changes (well except the years, and some of the students in the classes). So we open the windows, and listen to all those "cool kids" with the pimped out and/or noisy vehicles out the window on Barstow street. For those on the other side of the hall, we attempt to pique our ears to the professor’s voice rather than the train screeching and screaming by every five to 10 minutes. Oh yes, and we must make friends with our neighbors if we plan on opening the hall doors. It is likely that one or more of the classes will have a video or some other form of distraction at least once during the class period.
Now add to this the aromas of food from the education rooms (hey, how come they always get the good stuff?), and try once again to focus on the first amendment’s impact on a journalist, the forms of research methodology or how history affects a culture. This stuff is easy, right? Perfect atmosphere for learning... hey, pay attention to me! I am not done yet.
Creaky floorboards under the carpet, thin walls, and narrow hallways... these are the least of our worries in Barstow. Visiting ones’ communication advisor, one walks into a tiny little room, which is surprisingly called an "office." How anyone can work in some of the tiny, odd shaped rooms handed out to some of our professors is beyond my comprehension, but they do it. (Congratulations to each of them.)
A tiny note to our less frequent Barstow guests; you do not have the 60 cents for a Mountain Dew, eh? Looking for the bubbler... yeah, that is upstairs. (Do not feel so bad for not knowing. I’m a communication major and it still took me a full year to acquire that knowledge.) But there are some perks. Well, one perhaps, at least we have a parking lot now.
