Drew Armstrong: A plea for the liberal arts buildings

Hello, soon-to-be Class of 2007. Chances are that some of you who will get acceptances in the next few weeks are visiting campus right now, taking a wide-eyed look, letting tour guides shuffle you around and name the dates when particular buildings were grown.

Some of you may have even decided on your majors. If you're thinking about a music or English major, this column is for you.

Don't come here. Penn doesn't care about you.

I don't recall if my tour guide stopped by the Music Building at 201 S. 34th Street. If she had, I imagine the presentation would have gone something like this:

"Built by architects Cope and Stewardson in 1892, the building has not been renovated or cleaned since then. Moving on."

If the tour guides don't stop by, there's an easy way to find it. Head west toward 45th Street or so, bearing a little to the north. Find an abandoned brick building. Take a picture. Then, walk around campus until you find a building there that looks about the same, minus the "Eviction Notice" sign. That'd be the Music Building.

Inside isn't much better. I was joking before when I said the building hasn't been renovated since 1892. Clearly it has -- by Dr. Seuss. Hallways twist and turn to nowhere in particular. Ladders lead up into a bare ceiling. The dumb waiter (a device that hasn't been in common usage in who knows how many decades) is sealed shut. There are holes in the walls and floors. The thermonuclear-hot radiators bang and clang as if there are tiny little submariners trapped in the pipes, tapping out a signal in Morse code that says, "Help! We're broken! Replace us with semi-modern heating!" Need I mention that it's been a while since the pianos were tuned?

Next door, things at Bennett Hall aren't much better. Yes, the English Department offices have a certain historic feel to them, but more "old" than "classic." The rusting windows are so old that the glass has actually begun to ripple (either that, or they were installed before they could actually make glass flat). Plenty of paint is peeling off the ceilings and walls. Maybe they're just waiting for it all to come off so as to avoid the labor costs of stripping it.

I should insert here that the faculties of these two departments are superb. Both departments are world-class, and my educational experience has been wonderful.

But you have to wonder how long they can keep it up if the professors are forced to work in filth and squalor and impressionable young minds choosing a campus see only dilapidated buildings more ready for demolition than teaching.

Penn reassures us that a few million dollars are right around the corner to fix up the old buildings and put the departments in the kind of housing they deserve. That's the good thing about a four-year institution. The collective memory of its student body is relatively short. Perhaps every four years, the winers and diners over at the development office assure a fresh batch of students, "Soon!"

I'm convinced that the panhandlers outside of Allegro Pizza could do a better job raising money: "Excuse me, mister, you look like you like the liberal arts. Got a quarter? Just need $5,999,999.75 more to get a building renovated."

In all likelihood, English and music majors probably make up a lower percentage of the graduates in the multimillion dollar tax write-off/alumni gift club. Mostly, I'm sure, they're Wharton finance concentrators rolling around on piles of cash and saying, numbly, "Excuse me, what's a book?"

So, what to do? Penn needs to figure out a solution here. Otherwise, the University will fall into a cycle of better and better facilities for the departments producing rich graduates while the music majors of the world work in places like, well, the Music Building. Somewhere between the magic white boards in Huntsman Hall and the holes in the ceiling of the Music Building, there's a compromise.

But for now, the only construction going on near Bennett Hall is the work on the new Engineering building that disrupts my class every Monday and Wednesday.

The world of University fundraising shouldn't be a total free-market economy where the rich get richer. Plenty of Wharton students are getting tangible benefits from taking a few music classes every now and then so they learn that there are other sounds than "cha-ching."

The situation has become an embarrassment, and it's going to eventually cost the University the quality of students and professors. Maybe it's time to spread some of the wealth.

Drew Armstrong is a senior English major from Ann Arbor, Mich.

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