Walk around the campus of UNH and tell me what you see: fellow students, grass, trees, sports fields and teams, buildings, oh and what’s this? An unfinished construction project and one heck of an eye sore.

I have to be honest, I was O.K. with the new dorms, not thrilled, just O.K. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to see my university expand, but a couple problems have arisen in my mind. First of all, the inability to keep the site clean makes it look like it went through Hiroshima, Nagasaki, The Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, one after the other. The grounds, simply dirt and rocks, appear destroyed worse than the credibility of the Clinton presidency. Quite frankly, it looks like crap.

Another problem, I have spoken with many of my commuter friends who, like many others, are distraught about how long it takes them to find a parking spot sometimes and, more importantly, that when they do find the one last parking spot, it is often farther away from their class than Bush was to ending the War in Iraq. I don’t know the last time you checked the hefty price for a decent education, even without room and board, but there should be just a little bit more parking than there is to benefit all UNH’s students.

“If you’re running late, it is very hard to find a spot,” ex-commuter Brandon Way says, “One of the reasons I chose to live here was because sometimes I would be five minutes late, and then end up fifteen because I had to park on the other side of campus”

Call this last one a bit of complaining if you want, but in Bixler Hall, some students awake at 6 a.m. Monday through Saturday to the sounds of nail guns and screaming construction workers. I know that one isn’t that big of a deal (I was just told to say it by a friend who found out I was writing this article, and now that I have, I digress).

Don’t get me wrong, UNH has a great deal to be proud of. I’m happy with my choice and I love it here. I love how close everything is to my dorm and I love  the diversity all over this campus. I’m actually excited to see what this new dorm will look like, despite the said problems I have with its creation. And maybe, just maybe, I can swallow said problems and learn to love it anyway, but wait…another building?

The Henry C. Lee Forensics Institute, housing a forensic crime command center, labs for students,  actual law enforcement officials, and a museum open to the public, will all be part of this new piece of UNH. It sounds great, as a Criminal Justice major, I love the sound of the building and I can’t wait to see it completed. However I read every article I could find about this building, watched news clips from NBC 30 and FOX News and with the exception of, “On the UNH campus,” I saw nothing of where this building is going to be placed.

I can’t see where a great building such as this will go. On top of that, the new dormitory is set to finish in the summer of 2009. Guess when the erection of this new building will commence? The summer of 2009. Is that really how we want things to be? I want to walk through the University of New Haven for at least one year without having to hear hammers and yelling. I just want to see a working, built campus.

Another day, another eye sore, another multi-million dollar building, not to mention another period of time that the students of UNH will have to deal with construction and park farther away. Pretty soon maybe some students will park at Shop Rite or Seven Eleven down the road. Maybe the commuters will take a bus, or go back in time and walk to school, three miles both ways, uphill, in the snow. Ideas like this are going to need to be formulated unless some land is magically commandeered for this building. One thing is for certain, something has to be done.