I Don't Have Anything to Post But Loose Ends
Wait...I was going to tell you about the apartment complex in my delivery area, right? Well, it's mentioned in the second half of "These Pizzas Won't Deliver Themselves" -- it's Waterview Park, the gigantic apartment complex at UTD. I was at the Ghengis Grill (mmm...) on Sunday and I saw the Dallas Observer (local independant Dallas newspaper, kinda like a good version of the Shepherd Express) sitting there in a bin. I picked one up, and the cover story was about Waterview Park and how bad it is. I just had to read all about it, since I deliver so many pizzas to those Waterview potheads.
The article started with the salacious story of a campus rape from the rapist's point of view that was a bit much but illustrated both the campus' lack of safety and the campus' reluctance to provide info that people need, i.e., that a rapist is living in the apartments. The guy admitted to the deed (though now has lawyered up and claims he only admitted it because he wanted to help the victim, whatever that means), and was allowed to live out the rest of the semester in the dorms. But he wasn't the only criminal up in there. Assaults were all over the place, and the Apartment managers were deciding to deal with it by doing nothing, which saves money but doesn't help anyone.
Crime turned out to be the least of the residents' problems. Black mold was making people sick, maintenance requests were received and not acted upon for months, and emergencies like a leaking toilet took hours to get dealt with. The amateurish SMU writers detailed these things with interviews framed for maximum horror. Things were looking pretty bleak for the poor students of UTD. Now I should mention that this is probably the most expensive school in the area. I mean, the elites of Dallas send their children there, and they are constantly expanding and building new and exciting buildings in which to presumably brainwash students. Many of the students also come from other countries, and are trapped on campus like rats because they have no cars. So the apartments being dangerous and evil is really bad for them, since they can't even move to some other apartments without messing up their foreign lives. My point is, the parents who pay for this "education" couldn't have liked to see that the University and Waterview Park were less-than diligent about crime and maintenance.
When you got to the meat of the story, however, by far the most interesting thing turned out to be the comments of the President of the company that owns the apartment. He said things like, "Oh, I don't believe all of that" when confronted with student complaints about maintenance delays. He talked about the 10 million dollars investors like he had made on the public/private partnership. He sounded rich and condescending, and seemed to feel bulletproof. He wasn't.
This article was written last week, and two nights ago I spied a letter written to every resident of Waterview Park hanging by a door. In the letter (which I stole), the property managers detail their response to the article, which was to eventually make maintenance response time 48 hours and improve the property aesthetically. The President also apologized to the school for his evil condescension and greed in the article. See? Journalism, even of the dilletantish muckracking kind, still can get things done.
The article started with the salacious story of a campus rape from the rapist's point of view that was a bit much but illustrated both the campus' lack of safety and the campus' reluctance to provide info that people need, i.e., that a rapist is living in the apartments. The guy admitted to the deed (though now has lawyered up and claims he only admitted it because he wanted to help the victim, whatever that means), and was allowed to live out the rest of the semester in the dorms. But he wasn't the only criminal up in there. Assaults were all over the place, and the Apartment managers were deciding to deal with it by doing nothing, which saves money but doesn't help anyone.
Crime turned out to be the least of the residents' problems. Black mold was making people sick, maintenance requests were received and not acted upon for months, and emergencies like a leaking toilet took hours to get dealt with. The amateurish SMU writers detailed these things with interviews framed for maximum horror. Things were looking pretty bleak for the poor students of UTD. Now I should mention that this is probably the most expensive school in the area. I mean, the elites of Dallas send their children there, and they are constantly expanding and building new and exciting buildings in which to presumably brainwash students. Many of the students also come from other countries, and are trapped on campus like rats because they have no cars. So the apartments being dangerous and evil is really bad for them, since they can't even move to some other apartments without messing up their foreign lives. My point is, the parents who pay for this "education" couldn't have liked to see that the University and Waterview Park were less-than diligent about crime and maintenance.
When you got to the meat of the story, however, by far the most interesting thing turned out to be the comments of the President of the company that owns the apartment. He said things like, "Oh, I don't believe all of that" when confronted with student complaints about maintenance delays. He talked about the 10 million dollars investors like he had made on the public/private partnership. He sounded rich and condescending, and seemed to feel bulletproof. He wasn't.
This article was written last week, and two nights ago I spied a letter written to every resident of Waterview Park hanging by a door. In the letter (which I stole), the property managers detail their response to the article, which was to eventually make maintenance response time 48 hours and improve the property aesthetically. The President also apologized to the school for his evil condescension and greed in the article. See? Journalism, even of the dilletantish muckracking kind, still can get things done.
posted by Mike Pape @ 7:04 AM
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