Mold! at the EPB!

In their infinite wisdom, the University of Iowa administration decided that a nifty way to "go green" and save money this last summer would be to shut off the A/C in the English building on early mornings and weekends.  Somehow the administration neglected to consult the many scientists that literally work for them--or even just the native Midwesterners that surround them--because they somehow spaced on the rather obvious fact that summer-heat-and-humidity+poorly-ventilated-spaces=wicked-nasty-mold.

Which is exactly what grew in the Grad Student offices in the basement of the EPB.  The Iowa River flood of this last summer certainly didn't help things, either--though, once again, why a University with its very own School of Architecture still built a building with a basement next to a river that regularly floods, is another grand mystery.

This is why you don't hire business executives to run colleges, boys and girls.

Now, normally the higher-ups couldn't care less what happens to lowly Grad Students, but the mold has officially become a Public Health Code Violation, so us English Grad Students were recently re-located to new offices...on the 6th floor...of a partially-condemned old building in desperate need of renovations...on the opposite side of campus from our classes.  Also, the offices look like this:

We just need to lay down a rusty mattress, scatter some used needles, and blare some '70s-era Punk Rock to complete the Heroin-Den aesthetic.

So now as we run back and forth across campus between our offices and actual classes, we begin to feel like some harried Victorian street orphans.  This prompted a facebook comment of my own: "Oy, guvnah! I ain't no street urchin, the mold in ye ol' EPB dun driven me outta house and home it did. Walkin from one end o' campus to the other I gots to now. Beggin yer pardon sir, but if twas the University presidency that done shut off the A/C when the Thames flooded, shant it be them that should be given up their offices to us? Bollocks on the lot of 'em! Dem ol' wankers do nuthin' but get banjaxed off their arses and smoke their fags and fill their nappys."

It was very well received.