Culture Wars – Maintenance Department

Carving out and creating the tech position at a school was a gradual evolution. Even the name evolved. Computer guy, computer tech, computer teacher, tech teacher, tech person, tech coordinator, tech director. No one was really sure what made sense and more importantly, what roles, responsibility and status that implied. At the most basic, who does the tech person report to?

Aside from a programming or computer orientation class, you were not a teacher. You were not administration. You were not part of the staff, especially the maintenance staff. This was where I had some of my most challenging problems.

The maintenance staff was extremely efficient and friendly. They made sure the heat, lights and power worked. They provided great meals at the dining hall and catered small events all across campus. They kept the athletic fields in top shape. They kept the buildings and the grounds immaculate.

But they were a separate clan. Occasionally one or two of them would join a table of teachers at the dining hall, and we chatted amiably when we met around campus. But it was clear we were not them and they were not us.

Each dormitory building had a basement where the water shutoff, power boxes and steam tunnels connected. There were storage areas also but those maintenance areas were behind locked doors with posted signs. Teachers and boarding staff were not welcome to wander in those areas. 

When we wired the dorms, it meant creating a space for a “server closet”. In this room all the wires from the Ethernet plugs joined and were connected to the switches. The fiber optic cable between the buildings was connected and power and light was provided to maintain the network equipment. 

These buildings had been built 80 years before, of brick, with no plan to divide the “maintenance area”. So in each building, without consulting me, the maintenance staff created a “tech box” within the maintenance area where I could enter with my own key, and yet was walled off from “their area”. In some cases it was not convenient for my access, but their priority was that they give me just enough but not allow me into their territory. So we had several tense meetings about adjusting what they had built for me.

It was not clear who was in charge of these decisions. Clearly not the Head, not the Dean of Student Life, not the Dean of Students, not the Academic Dean, not the Dean of Faculty, and not the CFO or the Business manager. So it was me against the maintenance guys. In the end, the CFO or the Dean of Faculty kind of became the arbiter of Kevin/maintenance disputes.

It was cordial but it was clear. You are not one of us and you are butting into our things. We don’t like it. Their attitude was that they would do what they thought best, and asking forgiveness was easier than permission. It left me often having interesting conversations at the dining hall with various administrators about my dilemma. Somehow these deans would discuss it internally and the Head of Maintenance would find me and say “OK, I’ve just been told to do X. Let’s go.” Generally he was not in a good mood.

It was not clear where some decisions came from. I had been talking with the Dean of Faculty and the CFO that the next phase for the school would be to put access for students in the academic areas. What exactly that meant no one knew. It was another journey into the unknown.

A year or so after the dorms were wired, I returned from spring break and was surprised when I went to my office in the science building and there were wires and outlets sticking out of all the labs and classrooms. 

At schools like mine the classes were limited to 18 students. Small class size was a selling point and priority. Often classes were 12 or 14, but 18 was max.

So the maintenance team had decided to put 18 Ethernet outlets into every classroom and laboratory. Way more than dorms, this meant hundreds and hundreds of cables leading all across the building and ending in a new server closet. They had researched themselves and decided to put wire “baskets” hanging from the ceiling all along the corridors. So now there were trays carrying hundreds of blue wires running throughout the building.

They proudly showed me their “surprise”. Probably non-tactfully, I said that we did not need them in the classrooms, and that in the labs two outlets would be sufficient for access. That would be 24 or so wires, not 300. 99% of what they had installed would never be used.

The Head of maintenance just walked off in a huff and said “We knew you were going to ask soon and we are too busy to have to rush over every time you have a new idea.” We had to maneuver around the miles of wires and trays that clogged up the ceilings and closets for years.

Just one of many cultural clashes over the years.