When the UAlbany uptown campus was built, all the buildings were given functional names. The Philosophy department is in the Humanities building, on the podium next to Education and across from Business Administration.
Here’s the rub: The actual school of ed was moved downtown long ago and so doesn’t have anything to do with the Education building. The business school got a shiny new building several years ago, and so we’ve had to awkwardly distinguish the new business building from the old business building (which hasn’t actually housed any of the business classes).
This year the old business building has been closed for remodeling. The admin is taking advantage of the transition to rename it and a few others, too. They are running an on-line survey on new names.
The poll lets you pick from a list of options and then make some fill-in-the-blank suggestions. However, the decision has already been made that the old but rechristened buildings will be named for geographic features, like the Hudson river and Catskill mountains. The instructions for the free-form suggestions specify that they should be geographic features. I suggested Normanskill, Peebles Island, and Green Island.
Given free rein, I’d have had some different suggestions.
First, the merry-go-round: Officially rename the old Business Administration building “Education”, the old Education “Building 25”, and Building 25 “Old Business Building”. Much comedy would result from having to distinguish the new Business building, Education which used to be the old business building, and the new Old Business Building. Endless hijinks.
Second, “Building McBuildingface”. Naturally, this was my first thought when I got the e-mail with a link to the survey.
