Every so often we come up with an idea for a small improvement that could be made to something on campus that would make our time here nicer. Individually, they’re not things that we would write a news story or an editorial on, but rather the kind of thing that we sit around and say "Now wouldn’t it be great if ...." Here now are some of our recurring favorites.
The first group includes matters of convenience. For example, having a dry cleaning service that picked up and dropped off on campus would be a timesaver for many students, as would placing drop boxes for library books in the Union and possibly the Commons. In a similar vein, having card readers on the laundry and vending machines would be nice for when we run out of appropriate change, the bank is closed, and the change machine at Public Safety is out of order (a surprisingly common triad of occurrences).
Another type of suggestion includes ideas to make our living and working environments better. The Institute working with the city of Troy to improve the lighting on Bouton Road and around the Union would be such an improvement. Any one of starting up recycling again in the renovated Union, adding laptop lock attachments in study areas around campus, or having Armory showers available for use whenever the Mueller Center is open would improve the general living environment at RPI greatly for a minimal investment.
Finally, we have ideas that are just niceties, like having pay-per-view cable channels available, or putting more classic video games in the games room. Something more involved, or perhaps student-produced, on the campus cable PowerPoint channels would similarly be nice. Or, to get away from the television, fixing up the old handball court behind Nugent Hall for basketball could provide a great afternoon pick-me-up.
Our final thought on this subject is that, if we at The Poly come up with these sorts of little things all the time, members of the campus community in general probably do as well. Just as fixx@rpi.edu was created to more quickly handle repairs, perhaps suggest@rpi.edu could be created to solicit and process such ideas from RPI in general.
