It was the top of the third, bases loaded, and no one could see anything. Members of both softball teams waited patiently for Public Safety to turn the lights on so the game could continue. “I called them ten minutes ago,” someone said, “but they still aren’t here.” Public Safety did eventually drive by, but it was just that, a car driving past the dark Willie Stanton softball field. Further calls met with the same response: they had already sent someone out to confirm that the lights were off. Not to turn the lights on, but to confirm that they were off. The game eventually had to be rescheduled, and both teams of approximately 30 students went home frustrated.
A few weeks ago, I was warming up for a late night intramural soccer game with my team when the soccer intramural coordinator came jogging over. “Hey, I just wanted to let you know that the lights may go off at halftime.” We were told that the timer on the lights is set to turn the lights at Harkness Field off at precisely 10:35, or 25 minutes before the end of our soccer game. If we weren’t able to finish our game then we would just have to end early as there wasn’t enough time to reschedule. Eventually, all games had to be moved up 30 minutes to accommodate RPI’s unwillingness to help. “I know the logical fix-it plan is to just change the timer on the lights but the thing is RPI really doesn’t care too much about intramurals so we have to do as is. They will fix it when they think it is important enough to fix it,” wrote Humberto Maciel ’09, the soccer intramural coordinator, in an e-mail to the team captains.
What if RPI is right in their decision to rank intramurals on its list of importance between hiring professors that speak fluent English and installing water fountains that dispense chocolate milk for free? Surely they must have a few reasons for not caring about sports at RPI.
It only happened a few times. The lights were never turned on at softball, and they turned off halfway through many soccer games this semester. So it’s just an isolated incident. Well, except for last year where many late-night games were often played without the aid of lights, because they were never turned on, or turned on once the games were almost over. That only goes back two years, but they surely must have been vigilant before then.
Not many students play intramurals. The last figure I heard was that approximately two-thirds of Rensselaer undergraduates play at least one intramural sport. So RPI was right in not wanting to waste money on those two-thirds when there is a whole third that sees no immediate gain!
It would cost more than the apparent value of intramural sports. I understand that research, EMPAC, and landscaping are all the rage on our campus nowadays. All of the current funds are being used for new buildings, multi-years plans, or salary increases. It’s not like students pay $20 per team for soccer and $15 for softball. Actually, they do, but it’s not like there are a lot of teams that play in these sports. This is RPI after all, only a measly record 54 teams signed up for soccer this year. That accounts for only $1,080 in income from soccer intramurals, and everyone knows that it costs at least $1,085 to hire a manual laborer to change the timer on a set of lights.
This wouldn’t be a good article if all I did was complain without offering any possible solutions. So here it is: Give Public Safety access to the lights. Every time the lights were out we end up calling Public Safety, and every time we find out an hour later that they can’t do anything to help. RPI should know that it’s the small things, such as turning the lights on, that go a long way toward a more enjoyable college experience.
