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by Dale Grauman

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JCA Remodel Cracks Up

With the furniture still under warranty, the manufacturer replaced
the JCA's broken chairs for no additional cost.
--Benjamin Tertin, photo.

Bulging carpet, a shattered window and damaged furniture have marred the inaugural semester of the Joseph C. Aldrich Student Center (JCA).

Despite the damages, campus authorities remain optimistic about the integrity of both the remodel and the students who pass time there.

"When you do a major remodel, you are going to have things like that," said MBC's executive director of campus support services, Lloyd Helm. "It's the nature of the beast."

Student maintenance workers reinstalled the carpet in the game room at the west end of the hallway because the plywood subfloor had begun separating from its base.

Mr. Helm said that heat changes in the room affected the glue that fastened the carpet squares to the subfloor, and this caused the plywood to start warping.

The warped subfloor resulted in bubbles that grew tall enough to warrant a cautionary sign in front of the ping-pong table.

Maintenance workers used nails to replace the staples that had failed to hold the subfloor in place. The use of staples is "common in the industry," Mr. Helm said, but nails penetrate deeper and should resolve the problem permanently.

Then students shattered a window in the southeast corner of the game room. They had propped the window open with a ping-pong paddle. MBC junior Oliver Stephens removed the support paddle to use it in a game of ping-pong and replaced it with an unused paddle. After Stephens turned away from the window, the new support paddle slipped, which allowed the pane to slam shut and shatter on impact.

Mr. Helm said the window was never meant to be opened in the first place. A thermostat controls the temperature in the room, so he had the windows sealed shut. All of them were closed except the window in the southeast corner. The broken window has since been replaced and sealed shut.

In the student commons, several sofa chairs sit on wobbly legs. Calvin Simon, MBC's facilities coordinator, has posted signs warning students not to move the furniture around. Students mat be required to serve a campus and will be held financially responsible for broken furniture.

Mr. Helm said that the broken sofa chairs were defective, and the manufacturer is replacing them for free under warranty. That style of chair should normally last about seven or eight years.

The chairs in the JCA lasted about eight weeks.

A black leather couch in the student commons is the only piece of furniture "broken by aggressive use by students" said Brianna Knuckey, student leadership adviser.

Freshman Jonathan Page dropped sophomore Jason Reando on the couch as the pair wrestled, splintering a piece of the couch's frame.

The couch was originally located in the student government office. It was not under warranty, and the couch will go back to the office once it is stable.

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