Editor’s Note: This is a satire piece from The Collegian’s opinion section. Real names and the events surrounding them may be used in fictitious/semi-fictitious ways. Those who do not read the editor’s notes are subject to being offended.
FORT COLLINS, Colo. — Nowhere is safe. All around Northern Colorado, an invasion of orange cones and caution tape dictates our everyday lives. Excruciatingly slowly, buildings, highway renovations and more are springing into being, destroying parking lots and traffic patterns in their wake.
Ad
“Old White Donor Hall and ‘That one dorm we never quite finished’ are still generating curious stares and a bit of buzz.”
Residents fear for both house and home.
“Last week they got my neighbor’s driveway!” said Fort Collins resident Maya Rites. “I’ll be damned if they get mine.”
To make sense of the crisis, several Colorado State University researchers from the College of Liberal Arts began to document and classify the crisis under a broader theoretical framework they are calling constructionism.
“Constructionism is, broadly defined, a constitutive construct constructing construction within a localized area,” said constructionism founder Jamie A. Venue. “Ironically, none of the construction is ever finished. Northern Colorado, while not the only area affected by the practice, is incredibly affected. I mean seriously, does construction ever end here?”
Theorists, though, are at odds when it comes to the cause of the phenomenon. Dr. Bob “Air Quotes” Strete argues it’s structural.
“Renovating old buildings doesn’t make them ‘shiny,’ just ‘less terrible.’ Clark, for example, will never see renovation.”-Dr. Bob “Air Quotes” Strete, theorist
“’Bureaucracies’ serve a certain ‘constituency,’” Strete said. “To show ‘tangible’ signs of progress, they often erect statues, buildings and the like. Thus, we get a ‘sh*tload’ of construction.”
Psychoanalytic academic Laney Rhodes argues differently.
“Humans, by nature, desire to build,” Rhodes said. “We also, however, desire destruction. With the solidification of the nation-state and relative stabilization of global politics, we seek outlets within our own cordoned circles to build and destroy in a glorious cycle.”
Rhodes later went on record stating, “I do wish we’d stop doing it where there’s free parking though.”
Ad
Even the CSU campus hasn’t gone unaffected. Old White Donor Hall and “That one dorm we never quite finished” are still generating curious stares and a bit of buzz.
“I’m not even sure they’re still working on them,” said CSU senior Ashlyn Burns. “Those sites have been there since I first toured six years ago.”
Despite the inevitable march of progress, many buildings on campus are still, according to county inspectors and students alike, “old as sh*t”.
“‘Flair’ is the name of the game,” Strete said. “Renovating old buildings doesn’t make them ‘shiny,’ just ‘less terrible.’ Clark, for example, will never see renovation. Partly because it lacks ‘flair’ but also because the liberal arts aren’t branches of study so much as refined bullsh*t.”
Researchers, however, are at a loss for solutions.
“Even cursory analysis reveals that without intervention, constructionism will never f*cking end,” says Venue. “If you have any potential solutions, please contact us.”
Paul Brull can be reached at letters@collegian.com or on Twitter @csucollegian.
