terrapinsanity.com

Improving the community environment surrounding campus is correctly seen by our leaders as critical to our future. It’s hard to recruit top faculty who would need only one visit to learn there is no safe or affordable housing to be had, for example. Their choice is between a grid-locked, race-obsessed county whose crime rates start with the officials running it and go up from there, or commuting either from a place where $1 million gets you a little fixer-upper or an affordable locale that’s a good two hours away.

Even in the last week leadership has canvassed faculty and staff for input on housing (though questions in that survey look jiggered so answers can only justify some pet projects no matter what – likely the topic of another post later.)

They don’t need to conduct a faculty survey to see the obvious, however, and that’s the seedy environment you see driving in on Route 1. No, we’re not talking about Madame Flora (the palm reader), the tattoo parlors, all-night diners or boarded-up car dealerships. We refer to the newly-erected Varsity.

Today’s Diamondback reports on the quality of life in this campus-launched venture (one that needs a lot more study to see who is really making money on this one.) It quotes property manager Barbara Steinke’s memo to residents thus:

“My previous communications have been polite and informative, but now I’m forced to take a stronger approach,” she wrote before explaining that it was “completely unacceptable” for residents and their guests to be “tearing directional and safety signs off of walls, stealing pictures, punching holes in walls, destroying exit signs, breaking glass in stairwells and hallways, vomiting in the hallway, gum on the carpet, dumping trash in the hallways.”

We can’t remember even the first time we encountered this kind of activity in Madame Flora’s parking lot up Route 1.

If UM doesn’t want a seedy College Park environment, then maybe the campus should stop building it.