Concordia University Wisconsin has nearly 4 miles of connecting tunnels and hallways that keep students out of the harsh winter elements. The elaborate underground system connects residence halls and academic buildings.
“Actually, it’s pretty funny to see students walking around campus in flip flops and shorts,” during the winter, said university spokesman Craig McCarthy.
Some of the tunnels date back to when the School Sisters of Notre Dame owned the 200-acre lakefront property before Concordia bought it in 1982, according to McCarthy. The Lutheran university, north of Milwaukee in the suburb of Mequon, has added to the maze of tunnels when constructing new buildings, including the School of Pharmacy, which opened in 2011.
More misery.
My undergrad institution had a few of these that were open to all (e.g. you could get from my dorm to the dining hall in an adjacent building by going under rather than across the street), and rumored miles and miles of them (frequented mostly by maintenance people, the most adventurous undergrads, and more controversial invited speakers, plus their entourages, who could bypass the picketing outside their scheduled venue by taking the subterranean route). It was nice to be able to get a meal without doing the full bundle-up, but I'm not sure I would have wanted to spend all day scurrying from place to place underground.
ReplyDeleteAny campus heated by a central steam plant probably has them; what's unusual here is that they're open to students (and, perhaps, that they're still being built).
Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio is like that (or it was). Every building on campus was connected by well-lit (and well-marked) tunnels and elevators. It was the most mobility-challenged friendly campus I've seen in my life. Everybody used the tunnels too, not just students in wheelchairs.
ReplyDeleteI was under the impression that tunnels were generally avoided as they tended to end up dark, dank, and dangerous.
ReplyDeleteThough, I have noticed in my (off-campus) travels that many cities in extreme climate zones have invested in tunnels/skywalks. Toronto has a network of tunnels that incorporate the subway and various shopping venues. Minneapolis has an enclosed skywalk that crosses through downtown buildings. But the around the Orlando (Orange County) Convention Center they have open air skywalks which might be refreshing in the winter but are unbearable in the summer.
For universities, I guess it would all come down to the proximity of buildings to one another and retrofitting a skywalk network would seem more feasible than digging tunnels.
"I was under the impression that tunnels were generally avoided as they tended to end up dark, dank, and dangerous."
DeleteThose would be the concourses in Midtown Quakerberg, which although reasonably clean and well-lighted, smelled strongly of piss, there being a robust population of homeless.
The steam tunnels between buildings of my high school campus were decidedly NOT for pedestrian traffic. It was rumoured that should a pipe break, one had about ten seconds to reach the end before beginning the transition to next day's lunch, and administration would be forced to inquire of one's parents as to whether one was ill, as one had not shown up for classes that day.
These are so cool.
ReplyDeleteSo basically half of Japan is like this: except the tunnels are filled with shopping malls and businesses.
ReplyDeleteIt makes sense to do this in places where temperatures drop so low that chancellors are called irresponsible for not closing down schools.
Well, might I suggest that, should the on-campus student populace resort to sexist and/or racist epithets about said chancellor over having to walk a few tens (to hundreds) of yards in the elements, they could be "re-educated" in subterranean team-building exercises involving shovels, the fruits of which would serve future denizens of their fine institutions? I think Strelnikov would approve.
DeleteWhile in graduate school, I delighted in reconnoitering and then using the tunnels, breezeways, and other connections between my thesis lab and classrooms. In retrospect, I was in those years suffering from the lowest basal serotonin levels of my adult life. I cannot prove that these things were unrelated.
ReplyDeleteThis is quite common in Canuckistan campuses. At three unis I have been at so far (including the one where I currently work), the tunnel system has been closed and sealed off (purportedly) due to sexual assaults at night, back in the 70s and 80s; and the tunnel system isn't the urban legend it is made out to be, I'll occasionally see a (previously unnoticed) doorway open wide and a maintenance crew fixing some electrical or plumbing problem, with a (now filthy and rubble strewn) large tunnel disappearing off into the distance in the direction of a neighbouring building. There is a very small handful of tunnels still open, with emergency buzzers and CCTVs halfway down long stretches (presumably if you are halfway along one and you are trapped between attackers coming from either end; I guess this is how this type of thing used to go down...).
ReplyDeleteThe danger of explosion was, I think, the main reason cited for keeping most of ours off limits.
ReplyDeleteIn retrospect, I'm pretty sure that radon and incompletely encapsulated asbestos should also have been on that list.
I post-docced in America's Attic and there were well lit, brightly decorated and very well used tunnels between many buildings on campus - I arrived in January to sub-zero-farenheit temps and very quickly learnt that if I got off the bus at the bookstore I could take a somewhat roundabout route via the tunnels and reach my lab with only a twenty yard stretch of outdoor (between the back door of the library and the front door of the languages building), and pick up coffee and a muffin on the way...
ReplyDeleteI got very fond of those tunnels, especially in summer when the humidity was unbearable.