What ever happened to an early spring, Phil?

It’s like that scene from the Matrix, the one where Morpheus reveals to Neo that it’s not… It’s like that scene from the Matrix, the one where Morpheus reveals to Neo that it’s not the year 2000, but the year 2300, or something like that. The setting is different, sure, and it’s not as grand in scale, and yeah, the human race isn’t doomed or anything, but the aura of death and decay is still the same: The cold desolate classroom in the Cathedral, the empty echoes of a lecturing professor, the shifting and rustling of the few students scattered in the back row, the frigid air of the air conditioner above.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s me, but it seems that classroom attendance has kind of, well, died in the last few weeks. And it died very, very quickly. People went to class one day and the next day they didn’t. It could, I suppose, be for a variety of reasons, the most obvious one being that classes do, as the Facebook group suggests, ruin the whole college experience. It could even be that there’s only a month of school left, that “Lost” is back on primetime, or that we’ve simply lost the motivation. But no, no, that doesn’t add up. Things like that take time; they don’t happen overnight. I think I know the real reason. It’s freaking cold outside.

My lips bleed every time I walk out of my dorm. My contacts freeze onto my eyeballs. The nasty city slush hasn’t melted yet, and the nastiness is leaking into my shoes and messing up my two hundred dollar designer – not really – jeans. For the first time in my life, I spent money on ChapStick. All and all, it’s a very unpleasant situation.

Still, between making the unenviable choice of failing a class or losing my toes to frostbite, I’ve come to the conclusion that Pitt can easily solve this problem without pouring billions into a weather control device a la Stewie Gilligan Griffin: connect all academic buildings with underground pedestrian tunnels. Not only would this keep people warm, it might even save the public bus system from having to haul students from the Towers to Clapp. Yeah, you know who you are.

Before you all congratulate me for coming up with this idea, I’ll be noble and humble and tell you that this isn’t as revolutionary as it might initially seem. MIT figured this out a while back, and every single building of theirs is connected to at least one other building. In other words, students can, with few exceptions, walk from one end of campus to the other without actually having to step outside. Willie Wonka did the same thing with his Chocolate Factory, and we all know what a big hit that was.

Now I know that Pitt has a fetish for big and tall buildings, but the University needs to face the truth: big and tall just isn’t going to cut it anymore. Pitt’s getting bigger, Oakland really isn’t, and we’re running out of places to invade – err, expand. The solution is to dig deeper into the land we already own.

It’s already proven that Pitt kids love the idea. The David Lawrence Bridge that spans over Forbes Avenue is already one of the most heavily trafficked areas on campus. The dimly lit corridor, the gaudy advertisements for questionable events, the scraps of duct tape hanging limply off the walls, the microcosm of Pitt’s creepiest and weirdest walking across at 3 a.m. – It’s a pretty trippy experience. Sometimes, I go there just for fun.

There are safety issues, however. The main one, I think, deals with Chevron. Before we start digging and exposing kids to the subterranean air, we need to truly understand what that mysterious steam is that’s coming out of the Chevron parking lot. We’d also have to hire the best engineers to avoid the Chevron-Eberly disaster. If you don’t know what that is, let me pose this challenge to you: There is a route, known to few, that connects our beloved Chevron Science Center with the less beloved Chemistry Library in Eberly Hall. Find it. Start at Chevron and try to get to the library without getting lost in the labyrinth, stuck in the elevators of dubious integrity, or just dying.

No doubt it would be expensive and time consuming, but I think this could be pretty fun too. We could make a slide from the Pete to the Towers. Depending on how hardcore you wanted to get, we could really trick it out with vacuum tubes and water slides and luges and stuff. I can already imagine it: Massive fundraisers, contests to name the tunnel – the Ravi Pandit Tunnel of Glory, anyone? – and the explosion of school spirit as all 18,000 students cry “I dig Pitt!”

It’s too perfect.

Send your bidding contracts and blueprints to Ravi at rrp10@pitt.edu.