As part of a repaving process, the City of Hoboken began absolutely obliterating Hudson Street last week. It was truly a symphony of destruction, featuring machines like excavators, motor graders, and a Komatsu Superdozer D575A. In its current demolished state, Hudson Street is wildly incapable of performing its designed duties, leading our editors to think that it might be more practicaaazal to simply keep layering new asphalt on top of the old road.
Never one to be outdone by the city, Stevens announced they too will be repaving all the roads on campus, and to one-up the city, they’ll also be redoing all the floors and fields. In short, “We are going to replace every surface that people walk, ride, or drive on with asphalt,” according to the construction email that everyone deleted without reading.
We at Off the Press also initially deleted that email without reading it but realized that it might contain the critical information that our readers demand we present, so we went into our deleted folder and got it back. Under What work is being done?, they wrote, “turning the campus into a giant sheet of road.” Under Why is this work happening?, they wrote, “We have to show Hoboken construction who’s boss,” and under To whom should I direct questions, they wrote, “anyone with a steamroller.” The email then concluded with the cordial sign off, “This message has been approved by the leadership of the sender’s division.” We were unable to confirm if these results were typical of these construction emails or not because we didn’t save any of the other ones from the past.
One of our editors visited the library, where the construction was plainly in violation of the noise rules, but no one seemed to care. We weren’t quite sure how they got a giant dump truck through the front doors, but it was cool to see it at work anyway. Right after the field was replaced with asphalt, a PE soccer class came on and had quite an experience with slide tackles resulting in several trips to the hospital and questions regarding who slide tackles in PE soccer. Paving the first floor of the Howe Center resulted in yet another closure of the bowling alley, disappointing the many students who had signed up for it as a PE and would now have to do online bowling.
Things got a little trickier when they started pulling up the grass on Schafer and Palmer lawns. Due to the amount of water stored inside that dirt after recent rainfall, it unleashed a small flood that carried away a few cars down the hill and temporarily paused construction. Once it was determined that semi-solid petroleum could be poured directly onto the ground though, the work surged ahead.
At Off the Press, while we lament the lack of greenery and look forward to the few trees that will be planted down in River lot, we do appreciate Stevens’ commitment to showing that it really can find new and evermore creative ways to do long-term construction on campus.
Off The Press is a satirical Opinion column written and organized by Off Center, often used to joke about current Stevens issues and campus news. It is currently organized by Off Center President, Matthew Brantl.
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