Hello and welcome to another action-packed meeting of ASU 101, the class that won't fill you up and never lets you down. I watch too many commercials.
And I'm lying, because today's class will be a huge letdown. See, I got a question that was busting with the potential for a glamorous and science-fictiony answer. Sadly, the real answer, although mildly informative, is really, really boring. Here it is now:
Q: In Center Complex, there is a sidewalk that runs across the lawn next to the volleyball court. If you go to either end of this sidewalk at night, you can see a light on underneath it in some sort of buried room. Someone told me it was a tunnel, and they run all over campus. Is this true? If so, one has to ask, why are they there at all?
A: You bet your beef jerky it's true.
See, my roommate's sister's friends once infiltrated the tunnels in Center Complex, making their way under Lemon Street and all the way up to the Business College.
But supposedly, the Business College (years before the W.P. Carey donation) was storing some old computers in rooms attached to the tunnels. My roommate's sister's friends tripped a motion alarm under the Business College near this supposed computer depot.
Before they knew it, DPS officers were dropping into the tunnels all around them, filling the tunnels with tear gas to flush my roommate's sister's friends out.
Of course, that's a lot of hearsay and urban myth. A better urban myth is that the tunnels are occupied by mole people who surface only to eat stray cats and send letters to the editor. I'd swear that one were true if I hadn't just made it up.
No, the truth is boring as all heck. I talked to ASU Facilities Management Director David Brixen, and he made it obvious that the tunnels were not at all interesting.
He said underground tunnels connect about 80 percent of campus, pretty much everything except some of the newer buildings east of MacAllister Avenue.
"The underground tunnels are for utilities," he said. Those utilities include steam, phone lines, data lines and chilled water for air conditioning. The purpose of the tunnels is to connect each building to the central plant, which is that big, industrial-looking square building south of the Life Sciences tower.
If that weren't exciting enough, Brixen said the only people who enter the tunnels are workers from telecommunications, data communications and facilities management. If anyone else tried to infiltrate the secured tunnels, DPS would bust 'em right quick.
Finally, Brixen assured me, "There's no secret things going on."
If that weren't boring enough, I got to go into a tunnel when I worked at the MU. Nothing but big pipes and wires. So there you have it. No sci-fi excitement in the tunnels.
Coming tomorrow: irate letters to the editor from mole people! Stay tuned!
Send your questions to the TA at ASU101@asu.edu.
