The Triangle

Issue date: 11/6/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Bob Reynolds

Media Credit: Bob Reynolds

The Penn Coach Yard chimney, or the more colloquial term amongst students for the structure, the Drexel Shaft, will be imploded on a date still to be determined, according to Karina Romero, spokeswoman for Amtrak.

Amtrak plans to exploit the open property for the purpose of better security and emergency access to existing utility tunnels as well as the construction of a parking facility for maintenance and construction vehicles.

The implosion of the Shaft is significant to students at Drexel University as it has come to represent many of the red tape and administrative issues at the University. The Shaft also contributes to Drexel's "ugly campus" ratings.

"No matter how good of a university Drexel becomes, students will always refer to the Shaft as, well … the Shaft, and … if it gets torn down, they will simply find something else to take the Shaft's place," Viren Doshi, senior biology major, said.

Doshi attributed this to the rationale that students will always feel marred by the university whether it is having a professor with seemingly unnecessary requirements for their classes or something as simple as having way too many tests in one day.

"The administration doesn't allow us around these predicaments," Doshi said. "And by now it has become second nature; even the shape of the smoke stack-it looks like a shaft."

According to Kevin Hou, sophomore biology major, Philadelphia has a great skyline and the chimney, an unsightly structure, ruins it.

"The structure itself isn't ugly, aside from the graffiti that has overtaken it in the past decade; what's ugly is that it has become associated with red tape and administrative problems of Drexel's past," James Katsaounis, assistant vice president of Communications and Marketing at Drexel University, said.

When the Shaft is imploded, the view of the Philadelphia Skyline will only improve, he added.

Katsaounis also said, "Drexel today, whether administratively or aesthetically, is a completely different university [and] what the chimney may have represented of Drexel's past no longer holds true."

Drexel went through some very "trying times during the late 1980s and early 1990s" and the changes Drexel University's former president Constantine Papadakis made "have been nothing short of revolutionary," he said.

Regardless, students still say they "got the Drexel Shaft" every time they encounter an administrative problem at Drexel.

Katsaounis said the term is very derogatory against an institution that has educated and advanced so many people of diverse backgrounds in their professional careers.

Romero said that "the smokestack (the Shaft), in particular, is a safety hazard," and the steam plant has, in addition to being out of service since 1964, not received any maintenance.

According to Romero, though the initial date for the implosion of the Shaft was Nov. 8, this day was chosen prematurely and an official date has yet to be set. She assured, however, that the implosion will not affect train services in any way.

This article has been corrected.

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