Wednesday January 19, 2011 year: 131 No. 10 the student voice of
The Ohio State University
www.thelantern.com
thelantern Apartment woes irk student
sports
usiiensg hoe s r
Part
2
This is part two of a three-part series discussing the ins and outs of housing on and off campus. Part two explores one student’s rocky start to living in an offcampus apartment and how she handled the situation.
DYLAN TUSSEL Assistant sports editor tussel.2@osu.edu
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arts & life
One Ohio State student found out first-hand that what you see is not always what you get when it comes to leasing off-campus properties. After traveling abroad for the summer, Laura Bolling, a thirdyear master’s student in East Asian studies, returned to Columbus expecting to find a suitable apartment. She shopped around to find that students had already claimed most of the nicer properties. But then she thought her luck changed when she found a vacancy at a University Manors property at 42 E. 13th Ave.
Bolling said she asked to tour one of the units, but the company told her she could only see a model. “(My) mom noticed the appliances looked really new and asked if they were that new in all the apartments,” Bolling said. “They said they were in the process of updating all their apartments.” But that’s not what Bolling saw when she walked into her apartment at the beginning of January 2009. “We walked through the door of my apartment, and, lo and behold, you have this refrigerator that looks like it’s 20 years old,” Bolling said, “and it’s been sitting outside all 20 years.”
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OSU prof builds Lego replica of the ’Shoe SARAH PFLEDDERER Lantern reporter pfledderer.2@osu.edu
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high 30 low 21 flurries
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27/14 p.m. snow 16/8 partly cloudy 19/14 mostly cloudy 23/11 a.m. clouds www.weather.com
Courtesy of Laura Bolling
Laura Bolling said she moved into her University Manors apartment to find a rusty refrigerator in the kitchen. The property management company removed the fridge after a health inspector deemed it unacceptable.
Ohio Stadium Lego replica fast facts
Lego is abbreviated from the Danish words “leg godt,” which mean to “play well,” according to Lego’s website. Paul Janssen has taken his play with Legos to the next level. In fact, he has taken it to about every level of Ohio Stadium. Janssen is an OSU associate professor of physiology and cell biology and an associate professor in cardiovascular medicine. He finished two years of construction on his Lego replica of Ohio Stadium on Jan. 1. The 8-foot-by-6.5-foot replica will be composed of more than one million Legos after the finishing touches are put on the stadium. And yes, it is and will be composed of only Legos. “I really tried to build the whole thing as a Lego purist,” Janssen told The Lantern. “It becomes less of a challenge if you modify the pieces.” Janssen began collecting Lego pieces for the project in 2005 using pieces of his own collection, borrowing from others and buying new sets in bulk. He estimated the entire structure would have cost more than $50,000 if he would have bought all new pieces for the project. “Lego products range from $1.99 to $499.99, and average sets are between $29.99 and $49.99,” said Julie Stern, Lego Brand relations manager. Janssen took about 20 pictures of Ohio Stadium to create his own blueprint for the build. His construction started in May 2009. He built the stadium in his basement and “worked on it in spurts,” he said. He did most of the building on Saturday and Sunday mornings between 5 a.m. and 9 a.m., he said, because his wife and three kids were still sleeping and he could have more time with them later in the day. He built the replica entirely on his own without help or bothering his family, he said. Janssen played with Legos until he was 13, and then went through a period in high school and college when he put the hobby on hold because he was too busy with school. Lego builders call this period “the dark ages,” he said. After earning his doctorate in his homeland, the Netherlands, Janssen moved to the U.S. and
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The replica was constructed using about 1 million pieces. Janssen started collecting pieces in 2005, started construction in May 2009 and finished Jan. 1, 2011. The dimensions are 8-feet wide, 6.5-feet long and 2.5-feet tall. The replica is 1/120th the size of the real stadium.
brought his childhood Legos with him. He came out of “the dark ages” and began building again 10 years ago, he said. Lego building is a common hobby among many ages, Stern said. Most Lego purchases are made for children ages 5 to 12, however, many Lego customers are avid adult builders and artists. “We have fans from 2 years old all the way to 102. You’re never too old to play with Lego bricks,” Stern said.
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The average price of a Lego piece is 12 cents.
ssen ul Jan of: Pa r design y s te r ditor fo s cou photo anaging e M e and SourcLY GRAY / MOL
In accordance with his hobby, Janssen co-founded the Central Ohio LEGO Train Club (COLTC) in 2003 with four other adult Lego fans. The COLTC is a non-profit organization for adults that have “(re)discovered the joy of building creations out of LEGO brand building blocks,” according to the club’s website. Janssen is the club’s president.
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Office supply vendors cut, more to come OSU’s ‘horrendous bureaucracy’
DYLAN TUSSEL Assistant sports editor tussel.2@osu.edu Ohio State officials say they don’t know how the university’s resource-squandering bureaucracy grew to include more than three times the number of vendors OSU President E. Gordon Gee said would suffice. As of October, OSU worked with 35,000 businesses per year, a number Gee said should be below 10,000 in his address to faculty Oct. 13. “This is one of those things that just happened to happen over a number of years,” said Brendan Foley, vice president of Financial Planning and Analysis at OSU. Gee said OSU needs to centralize its business to save money. “This university has a horrendous bureaucracy,” Gee told The Lantern editorial board Jan. 12. “We’re going to have to move in a number of these areas to a more centralized system.” OSU spends $1.3 billion per year on goods and services, and Foley said the university should save millions of dollars after trimming the fat. Since Gee’s October address, the university consolidated its business in two areas as part of what Gee dubbed OSU’s “de-bureaucratization process.” In November, the university signed contracts with United Parcel Service Inc. and OfficeMax Inc. for overnight shipping and office supplies, respectively, which will save OSU an estimated $500,000 per year. “We have a really attractive contract with UPS that’s much cheaper than FedEx,” OSU chief financial officer Geoff Chatas told The Lantern on Nov. 29. “But the biggie was office supplies. We had people buying things from corner shops.”
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OSU does business with 35,000 different companies. In 2009 OSU dealt with: 99 companies for plumbing 400 companies for pens
In 2010 OSU dealt with: 5 shipping providers 50 office supply companies 200 vendors for janitorial supplies and skilled trades Source: E. Gordon Gee, president, and Geoff Chatas, chief financial officer MOLLY GRAY / Managing editor for design
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