Emily Frank’s response to my letter in the Daily Illini
I appreciate Emily’s response (http://bit.ly/3inYm) to my letter in the Daily Illini (http://bit.ly/1uZudn) , but I’d love to know— what vested interest does she have in defending Housing’s utterly pitiful response to Thursday’s flood?
She’s not a housing resident (as she mentioned in her letter) and lives in a house. Frank can in no way compare her situation to our situation at Allen. Living in a house means that the resident is responsible for most maintenance issues. Living in University Housing means that the University is responsible for all maintenance issues.
In her letter, Frank noted that “At the beginning of his letter, Max claims that there was no effort what so ever made by the maintenance staff, but later on states that teams of county workers came and dried up the standing water.” She has it completely wrong.
Yes, “housing workers” came from all over “Champaign county” (in the words of one assistant director of housing). But this didn’t happen until 2 or more hours after the flood hit. Much of the damage was already done. Before she writes a response, Frank might consider reading my letter in its entirety.
Is Frank an employee of University Housing? Is one of her parents? Was she paid by University Housing to write this response?
Why didn’t University Housing submit a response of what went wrong in its own words?
Comment by Tom Trumpinski on 1 September 2009 at 5:13 pm:
Mainly because they could care less about your opinion, Max, to be blunt.
The last three questions before that one are a typical yellow-press journalist trick where questions impugning a co-respondent’s background is used to cast doubt about the validity of their statements.
Now, I’m not going to stop you from doing that here in Urbanagora, Max, but please realize that every time you do that, we’re all going to laugh at you–me publicly and out loud and everyone else behind their hands.
I’m going to offer a possible answer to your question about the response time, since I was out in that storm after picking up kitten from work at eleven o’clock. We were stuck at the Steak & Shake on South Neil for close to 45 minutes while man of the underpasses across the Railroad tracks were flooded out. Traffic everywhere in the Twin Cities was blocked, in some places for well over an hour.
Perhaps two hours was the soonest the on-call workers could get from their homes to work (where they have to punch in) to Allen Hall? I’d love to time it sometime with you during a similar flash flood.
Tom
Comment by Tom Trumpinski on 1 September 2009 at 5:13 pm:
…many of the underpasses….
Tom
Comment by Joshua on 1 September 2009 at 10:45 pm:
Yeah Max, I think you might have unrealistic expectations for how responsive housing staff is going to be. I found the DI article you sent me very interesting though, it suggests a bigger problem, that housing staff might just be a little dishonest w/ you all about the claims process and likelihood of recovery.
Comment by Joshua on 2 September 2009 at 7:35 am:
Max, thanks for your comment on my post. While I stand behind the general points I was trying to make, I took it down because the writing was terrible. Apologies. I was pretty glazed over from driving 9 hours and half asleep. I should have time to at least do a quick edit and toss it back up later today.
Comment by curmudgeon on 2 September 2009 at 8:45 am:
Stop.
Hurting.
America.