Long day, 'Little' work

When I picked up my room key in mid-September, I received a memo from the housing department apologizing for the massive construction site outside of Little Hall, my senior dorm. The note informed me that the project should have ended during the summer but, due to unforeseen delays, work would continue until October. An entire semester later, however, the construction site still shows no signs of completion. The entire front side of Little, between Edwards and Dillon Gym, remains a disgusting mess. However, this unsightly combination of mud, fences, stone piles, brick stacks, detours, construction machines, pickup trucks and garbage (unfortunate byproducts of Princeton's modernization) is not my main concern.

The overriding problem is that the construction workers seldom actually work. They arrive early each morning, around 7 or 7:30 a.m., and then sit in their pickup trucks for the next two hours, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. After finally emerging from these monstrous vehicles — which they park on the grass right next to the construction site, leaving deep mud tracks — these workers stand around talking and laughing to each other until 11 a.m., when they begin their two hour lunch break. During this extended period, some nap in their trucks or even on the site itself. After lunch, they go back to work: one kneels next to his task; the other four stand around him, watching. At 3 p.m. they all go home, leaving coffee cups, beer cans, cigarette butts, and food wrappers littered all over the site.

In addition, continuous disorganization and mismanagement have helped prolong this construction project. After seeding our courtyard in October, for example, the workers neglected to water the soil and thus, by the time rain arrived two months later, the grass seed had blown away. A few weeks ago, someone carelessly drove a backhoe over this same area during a rainstorm, leaving deep tire marks in the mud that will take several days to repair. In another instance, five workers removed an entire brick walkway running parallel to Little — the same walkway they had constructed in October — and then allowed the empty ruts to fill with mud and garbage. A few days ago, in order to reach some infrastructure they had originally paved over, they destroyed a section of the new Dillon parking lot. I have actually seen one worker pick up a shovel of dirt and then drop it right back into its original hole.

Who should take responsibility for this hopeless situation? I don't blame the workers — shirking from one's individual task within a larger group remains a key element of human nature as well as one of the cornerstones of modern economics. These men have no incentive to work any faster. They receive the same wages no matter how many hours they sleep on the job. Princeton University needs to mobilize its resources to force construction projects like the Little Hall disaster to completion. Why not set deadlines and offer financial incentives to those outside contractors who meet them? Otherwise, these workers will continue to accomplish nothing. Pat Truxes is a history major from Connecticut. He can be reached at ptruxes@princeton.edu.