West Quad Center

Damage in West Quad and Library Keeps Students Snowed Out

By Kingsman Editor Yelena Mandenberg where it was first printed

While we were all at home enjoying hot chocolate and staring at the outside world only through a window, the Brooklyn College campus was busy being snowed in. With no students trampling over the snow to get to class, the campus looked like a winter wonderland…. The entire quad a plane of white, untouched, snow. However, as well all know, snow, for as pretty and fun as it is, can cause some serious damage, like it did in both the West Quad building and the Library.

The West Quad building suffered from a leaky roof all throughout the break. As the contractor Brooklyn College had hired was cleaning off the snow on the roof in order to work on it, some snow removal equipment was able to damage a glass pane on the southeast corner of the practice gym. The glass did shatter but there was no report of damage estimates or even if anything was damaged due to this accident.

Also this week, an e-mail advisory was sent out by Chief Librarian and Executive Director of Academic Information Technology, Stephanie Walker, stating that there was a flood in the library that damaged many of Brooklyn College’s archival collections. She says, “we lost several hundred archival boxes, and the collections therein had to be quickly removed and dried. They must now be cleaned, repaired, restored to their proper organization, and rehoused in new archival boxes. We have been able to clear most of the rooms where we had initially spread collections to dry, and we have centralized the work in the LaGuardia Reading Room – the only appropriate space large enough for this work to be done. Staff are working very hard to get the collections restored to a state where they are once again available to the many students and faculty who use them for their teaching and research.”

While there is work going on in that part of the library, the LaGuardia Reading room will be closed, so students who find themselves usuals in the library may have to find a new place to study, at least temporarily.