Letters to the Chronicle

The monster in our closet

     It began in the fall of 2000. Question 3 was on the ballot in November and promised a multi-year tax cut. The commonwealth was the keeper of a huge budget surplus which it said would never go away. Many of us knew better, but more voted for the tax cut and it passed. State agencies, ironically including higher education, failed to educate the public about the monster in the closet - deferred maintenance - in state facilities.

     It's been an issue the governor and many legislators haven't wanted to acknowledge for years. But it doesn't go away. Unfunded, it quietly grows in the closet.

      The budget cuts of the late '80s stripped away the fat in higher education. In the Grounds Management Department, many services, some essential and some not, were eliminated. Furloughs and deep cuts occurred.
It was a dark time for those working in higher education and other state agencies. Many of us hung in there (pun intended) and did more with less and even managed to improve some programs through cultural change and hard work. But deferred maintenance was not adequately funded. It continued to grow in the closet.

      Over the past couple of decades funding for facilities operations has not kept pace with inflation, even after the University assembled multitudes of data supporting the need and provided it to state officials. In just the past three years, including approximately 3 percent annual inflation, the budget for the Grounds Management Department has been reduced by 18 percent. More service reductions have occurred. The monster has continued to grow.

     And now, the Legislature has announced another $50 million in cuts to higher education. We'll lose more services again, and this time most of them will be essential services that many people will definitely miss.

     But the really frightening part is that the monster is breaking out of the closet. Due to inadequate state funding, deferred maintenance is about to cause calamitous results. Building systems, including roofs, heating, ventilation, air conditioning systems, and electrical systems are failing all over campus. Utilities distribution systems feeding steam, water, and electrical power are way past their useful lives and are crumbling. Beyond some of these more obvious deferred maintenance issues lurk other problems outdoors. Roads, concourses, and sidewalks are crumbling. Aged vehicles, patched together over the past decade due to the lack of replacement funds, are failing safety inspections and being taken off line. There are no funds to replace failed mowers to mow our newly improved turf. These are the tentacles of the deferred maintenance monster breaking out of the closet.

     And it's going to get worse. Soon some building systems will fail, and they will have to be closed. There won't be adequate space to teach, no matter how many faculty we have available (and there are less of those, too). Roads, already in poor condition, will become unsafe to use. Steam lines, which provide heat and cooling to buildings, will fail and more buildings will have to be closed.
Believe it. This monster is real.

R. MARC FOURNIER
assistant director,
Grounds Management,
Physical Plant

History will justify Afghanistan war

     I am unused to finding myself on the side of the majority; I am reluctant to approve any policy initiated by George W. Bush. I deplore the death of innocent civilians caused by an in-ept bombing campaign, but I have to disagree with those who signed the statement opposing the war in Afghanistan ("86 faculty, staff sign letter opposing war in Afghanistan," Nov. 9).

     The issue is how to prevent the recurrence of events like those of Sept. 11 (the use of the term "retaliation" muddies the waters). The choice is between taking effective action, however costly, and taking refuge, however agreeable, in hopes that we are pious but delusive - in talks that promise only to be endless and inconclusive.

     It is easy to find excuses for inaction. But one does not give a mob of gangsters free run of a city because another mob will eventually take their place if they are removed. It does not follow that, because evil in general can never be eliminated, a particular evil should be tolerated. We need not conclude that, because other international criminals have gone unpunished, bin Laden should go free.

     I do not impugn the motive of the protesters; I only question their judgment. I recall, as they do not, that similar sentiments were voiced by many Americans during the rise of Hitler and the early months of World War II. As in that instance time proved the views of the protesters wrong, so in the present crisis, those who support the administrations' policy can await with confidence the verdict of time.

ELLSWORTH BARNARD
professor emeritus,
Department of English

COMECC is about community

     Sometimes in the hurly burly of a busy life, the unexpected fresh air, light and wisdom from an another culture and another century simply stop us cold, and deservedly so, with their poetry and relevance to our lives. Consider the following, a 19th-century Iroquois prayer:

We return thanks to our mother, the earth, which sustains us.

We return thanks to the rivers and streams, which supply us with water.

We return thanks to all herbs, which furnish medicines for the cure of our diseases.

We return thanks to the moon and stars, which have given to us their light when the sun was gone.

We return thanks to the sun, that has looked upon the earth with a beneficent eye.

Lastly, we return thanks to the Great Spirit, in whom is embodied all goodness, and who directs all things for the good of her children.

     What's so striking about this prayer is that it asks for nothing, but rather returns thanks for every blessing. It seeks to give back, to see the life of the individual in relation to the whole community of creation which sustains it. The prayer brings us out of our focus on ourselves and our individual lives and connects us to the larger scheme of things.

     To give back in the midst of our blessings, not simply to ask for more. This is the message of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Employees' Charitable Campaign (COMECC), which provides an opportunity for each of us to give back to the whole society which sustains us, and to reach out to the lives of people less fortunate than we are.

     It's easy to overlook your pledge, to have it covered by piles of urgent work, to ignore it in the press of Thanksgiving-to-New Year's concerns. But your gift is crucial in helping the neediest among us. Please, let's support the agencies and causes which make us a sharing, connected and humane community.

JOHN R. NELSON
professor,
Department of English