For the next two terms, the offices of the faculty and staff of the government department will be located in Gerry Hall while the renovations of Silsby Hall are being completed.
The sociology, African and African American studies and education departments as well as the social sciences computing program will be moving from from their normal locations in Silsby at the end of Spring term and will make their temporary homes in Richardson Hall over the summer months.
Silsby is being renovated to accommodate the anthropology department on the building's top two floors now that the psychology department has taken up residence in Moore Hall.
Facilities, Operations and Management planners decided that it was also time for the building to be redone throughout, since it has not been throughly renovated since its construction in the 1920s, Assistant Director of Facilities Planning John Wilson said.
Heating, electrical and other utility systems in the building will be improved, as will Silsby's overall handicapped accessibility.
Sociology chairman John Campbell said the move is an inconvenience, but worthwhile in the long run for the improvements the renovation offers.
"Both for the faculty and the staff it made a lot of extra work, but we know that it was inevitable and we regard it as a temporary exile," government professor Catherine Shapiro said of the move her department made before the beginning of Spring term.
Although the location in temporary quarters is something of a disruption, it is not really worse then that caused by the work that was going on in the building while the two departments remained in their normal offices, Shapiro added.
Government professor Richard Winters, however, said the time spent packing, moving and unpacking materials and the fact that some of his materials are going to be in storage and unavailable is a major inconvenience.
Winters said his temporary offices were adequate, but called them "sterile, clinical, and dated" and said that Gerry and Bradley Halls "were not renamed the Shower Towers for nothing."
As far as the sociology and AAAS departments are concerned, Campbell said he is happy that the move will take place over the summer since the reduced number of classes will mean less inconvenience and disruption.
Classes in several of the social science departments have also been relocated from their normal locations in Silsby over the past several terms to Gerry and Moore as well as to the Rockefeller Center while the renovations have progressed.
Government majors and minors were informed by Blitzmail about the department's temporary move. Students taking government classes as electives, however, may not be aware of the switch, Shapiro said.
