Talk:Columbia University tunnels

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I definitely don't agree that this article should be removed altogether, but most of it would be more appropriate in an article on Columbia tunnel lore. The Pupin stuff was obviously just embellished for the purpose of mythologizing it; hell, I was often guilty of bending the truth for dramatic effect when I took groups down there. Even the somewhat accurate stuff is mixed up -- for example, the steam tunnels on the west side of campus don't have rails for coal carts; those are in the tunnels under the powerhouse. Anyway, the tunnels *are* interesting enough to be worth seeing, especially the coal ones cos they're awesome and they're being destroyed from all the powerhouse work, and people are going to be telling each other these stories and going down there whether there's a Wikipedia article or not. I think whoever wrote the big red box needs to chill. --dylan 24.239.137.27 04:08, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pupin Hall

There's another reason why it's implausible to claim Pupin went untouched until 2003: it's where Ken Hechtman got his uranium. Durova 04:55, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

I once spoke to George Hamawy, a Radiation Safety Officer at CU, about radiation in the basement of pupin. He said that his first job, upon being hired (a few years ago) was to clean up that basement.


And regarding the comment that there couldn't have been any remnants of old experiments on the first floor of Pupin: Pegram laboratory was a nuclear research facility, so if it connected to the first floor of Pupin, it's entirely possible that work was being done in that space after the Manhattan Project. Beth 17:05, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Of course the first floor of Pupin was visited periodically. See, for example, this excerpt from a New Yorker article: http://www.undercity.org/links/archives/collegetunnels/Columbia/columbia5.txt

I just updated the description to call it -virtually- untouched while we discuss. 66.65.127.132 01:57, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Inaccuracy Box

I have moved the "This Article May Be Dangerously Innacurate [sic]" box to the talk page, replacing it on the main article with the disputed tag. A lengthy discussion on why the article is factually inaccurate should not be placed directly at the top of the article as it was, and this should clearly be a much better place for it. Perhaps a more devoted editor than I would like to include some of this information in the article itself, rather than just leaving it all in a large box at the top. John5008 --- talk 02:31, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

This Article May Be Dangerously Innacurate
For the reasons to follow, this article requires review, and any actions taken based on this article are likely both dangerous and illegal: Some of this article is accurate, but there is plenty which is not. There are, for example, no tunnels from the main Columbia campus under Broadway to the Barnard campus; the persistent rumor that such tunnels exist is demonstrably false since there is a subway tunnel in the way -- and even a station toward the southern end of Barnard's campus. Any coal tunnels under Broadway would have been built before the subway and obliterated by its construction; any that were built later would have had to be deep enough to go under the tracks and their structural supports, and bulding such tunnels through the bedrock would have been very impractical.

It is also not plausible that the first floor of Pupin remained untouched for sixty years, since Pegram Hall was built with a direct connection to the east end of that floor in the early 1960s and then replaced by the Schapiro Center in the 1990s, and since the Dodge gym was attached to the front of Pupin in the 1970s. Besides, like every other Columbia department, the physics department has a severe space shortage (this is why Pegram was built in the first place) and it would have made no sense to let an entire floor of a large building lie fallow for decades.

Nor is it plausible that the area was sealed off due to radioactivity. Any such contamination would have been dangerous far beyond the walls of one floor of that building, and any contamination small enough to be contained by those walls would not have required 60 years of isolation.

I suggest deleting the article entirely, since it is so filled with errors and since it may lead readers to endanger themselves and others -- not to mention being prosecuted for burglary and trespassing -- by exploring under the Columbia campus. Trust me: the tunnels just aren't interesting enough to be worth the effort and the risks.

I think the person above personally dislikes tunneling.

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