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Questionably mounted doors allow moisture to rot away ceiling tiles.

He called these backward doors a "potential deathtrap," and said inward opening doors on public buildings have been a "no-no" since the Babbs Switch fire in the 1920s.

Burger said one Christmas Eve in Babbs Switch, a town in rural Oklahoma, the townsfolk was having a party in the schoolhouse when someone bumped the Christmas tree--which was decorated with real candles--against the wall, which had a fresh coat of oil-based paint.

The paint burst into flames, and few could escape through the building's inward opening door before the panicked crowd jammed up against it and forced it closed, he said.

"People stood outside and watched their friends and relatives burned alive," Burger said.

Burger said not only are the doors dangerous, they also contribute to the building's decay.

"Because of the air conditioning the building has a slight negative pressure," he said. "The pressure opens the doors and lets warm air in, which immediately condenses on the cold pipes in the ceiling."

The condensation in the ceiling breeds mosquitoes and causes huge section of ceiling tile to turn to mush and fall to the ground, Burger said.

He said when one of the building's glass doors cracked, Facilities arrivied immediately and did what they could: tape it together.

"They're just doing what they can with what they have," Burger said. "Some of those doors are so old they can't even get parts for them. They just have to improvise repairs."

Burger said replacing, rather than repairing something, would become a construction job--which is out of the hands of Facilities Management--and into a "political authorization process." Construction on campus is contracted out, bid on, and paid for with different budgets, he said.

Bilger is not the only building that is falling apart. Near the Biomedical Sciences building there are some buildings so old the "Warning: Building Condemned" sign itself needs to be condemned.

And new buildings there are. At the end of former governor John Waihee's term, there were 10 buildings being constructed at once, including the Student Services Center, the Architecture building, the Center for Hawaiian Studies building, and the Pacific Ocean Science Technology building.

Some buildings in the old Engineering Quad seem on the verge of collapsing.

Of course, the POST building, which Burger called a "pug ugly eye sore monolith" and "that metallic blue monstrosity," is only half finished.

Why can't the university even finish the construction it starts? Building construction--like the building of Paradise Palms--is done in phases, each phase getting money from somewhere else, Burger said.

"There's lots of politically motivated money available to build new buildings," Burger said. "To furnish them internally, move people into them, and provide a support staff--to actually make them useful to the university--is next to impossible."

Burger said it is no wonder Facilities Management cannot keep up with construction.

"When 10 new buildings were built on campus, how much additional staff did they get?" he said. "Or were they just asked to knuckle down for 10 more because there's no way to fund new staff?"

The real problem is the state administration that refuses to support higher education--or education in general, Burger said.

"You have to work to be last in the nation in support of education," Burger said. "I didn't think anyone could steal that honor from Arkansas."

If the university is going to survive, the state needs to prioritize, Burger said.

"The university has a lot of good concerned people working here trying to do what they can despite budget cuts, despite things falling apart with no money to fix it," Burger said. "They stretch what they do have out, make things last as long as they can. They're just doing what they can with what they have."

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