STORM DOESN’T STOP|“:.7 MAINTENANCE i

by Chris McCarron

The big storm that jolted Islanders to begin the month eh, of February kept two maintenance people busy from Fa Friday evening until Monday. These two took turns : operating the snow plow. These men worked non- stop until finally some extra help arrived on Sunday. Unlike the cities of Moncton and Charlottetown, this storm didn’t eat up the snow removal budget at UPEI. The reason why it didn’t cost UPEI so much is that the snow didn’t have to be trucked away, like in the cities. Rather, on campus, the snow can be pushed away to form large snow banks. UPEI hasa lot of open space where snowcan be shoved. However, Moncton and Charlottetown do not have this luxury. Yet because of the amount of snow, the maintenance department had to rent an extra front end loader. This Pollution

loader was used to clean out the troublesome areas of the vet college.

Canada’s best sports facility, the Young Field House at UPEI, is marred with acontinuous bombardment of noise pollution. On a recent tour, important in plan- ning our national event, our group was subjected to the inanities of the local radio station at full blare. There was no escape in the locker rooms, the sports teaching areas, and even, later the classroom where the closed entry was barely effective against the pollution. During the tour we saw one sports instruc- tor trying to demonstrates and talk over the noise. I don’t know if he ever succeeded in catching the atten- tion of one youngster whose mind was decidedly elsewhere as she came close to tripping over the equipment. The December 91 issue of the Research quarterly on exercise and Sport carries a study on the temporary and permanent hearing losses suffered by people exercising to stereo and headphone exposure » over 75dB SPL. Keep inmind thatthe noiseofopen- | ing anewspaper is about 70dB. Other studies have shown that women, with a greater sensitivity to sound _ than men, score 10% lower on examinations requiring : e* recall, measured response time and thought when 2 oe subjected to inaudible frequencies. German studies a | have demonstrated that a leading factor in dysfunc- — A tional families and communities is NOISE. Even without these studies, simple consideration for others’ preference and time budgets should limit the use of such pollution to the personal space of the polluters.

The director of maintenance, Mr. Coles, explained that the campus roads must always be cleared 24 hours a day because of fire emergencies, student convenience, AVC needs and fuel. The university needs a constant supply of fuel because it can only run for two days without fuel. Mr. Coles said that there were no emergencies during the storm. There were a few abandoned cars which had to be towed and there were six or eight cars stuck which they helped out. Mr. Coles indicated that ‘‘outside of manpower it was pretty uneventful.’’

Sincerely S.E. Cregier

UPEI X-P RESS February6, 1992 Page 8