“Good Christ, I’ve done it,” you think. “I’ve really done it.” Your mother cries and your father is appropriately gruff as you scan your acceptance letter again and again, searching for some nasty pinch to wake you from this dream. But no pinch comes, because you have succeeded. Drexel University has invited you to partake in the good life, a life of job interviews and martini lunches and sharply creased pants, because you, my friend, have been allowed to step through the pearly gates of the college experience.
Nestled quaintly on the periphery of historic Philadelphia’s beautiful downtown, Drexel University receives you warmly on a teary day of packing and unpacking and upward gazes at the skyscrapers and the dorm buildings in which the great dramas of your young life are about to play out. Your parents finally drive away, that last horrible radio note fading somewhere on 34th Street, and you are alone. And free.
In the beginning, as with jobs, as with marriages, as with any commitment, Drexel is wonderful. There are parties, there are barbecues, there are handsome young men and pretty girls, there are delicious meals from lunch carts, everyone is a potential friend, and the skyline sparkles. But something changes. A crack opens in those secret rotting places, and the spiders come pouring through. A letter, an email, both filled with some dry fiscal language beyond your comprehension — financial holds, insurance fees, cancelled classes, and student advisors who are about as accessible and competent as the average American president. Your heart breaks, but you push on through your incomprehensible homework with your broken heart and your crappy lukewarm Ramen Noodles while your roommate plays noisy video games and disrupts your quiet space. You are summarily ejected from the clique you had found yourself in. Your major is not quite what you thought it would be.
Suddenly, college is terrible.
And whether you find your greatest troubles on the administrative level or the personal, at Drexel University, there’s one age old saying for your symptoms: you’ve got a bad case of the Drexel Shaft.
Amid Amtrak’s scenic tangle of rusty beams and sagging wires, flowing out from the profile of 30th Street Station like some hideous flower, a strange bit of architecture looms over campus. It’s the Drexel Shaft, they tell you, casual, jocular. A squat base, a decidedly phallic smokestack, tapering, burnt. Silent.
In 1929, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company built what would later become known among the disgruntled student body as the Drexel Shaft. While formally known as the Penn Coach Yard Chimney, it is simply no fun to groan, “Ugh, I got Penn Coach Yard Chimneyed AGAIN.” So, the chimney took on a simpler, more obvious name — and with it, a permanent role in the collective Drexel psyche. Why tie a physical structure to an abstract feeling? Perhaps for its convenient name. Perhaps for its, shall we say, unconventional appearance that contributed to Drexel’s infamous ranking as one of the top five ugliest college campuses in the country.
Ahh, but here is where the element of urban legend comes to play. From nowhere, on whispers, on feelings of fear, frustration, sadness, through some unspoken agreement, what was once your average steam plant was warped into a symbol for impotent student rage against a monolith of red tape and deaf ears. In It’s a Wonderful Life, Jimmy Stewart’s cherubic daughter famously tells him, “Every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings.” Well, at Drexel University, every time a student gets “shafted” by the overpaid members of society with skylights in their offices and spas in their homes, the Shaft grows an inch. But don’t giggle at the obvious joke for too long.
The Drexel Shaft is gone.
* **
On November 15, 2009, at 7:44 a.m., cold blue light drifts through drafty windows without curtains overlooking Baring Street, quiet save the distant city sirens that too often accompany the dying through congested streets. There’s a sink full of dishes, a peacefully sleeping boyfriend, and a hangover lying in wait. My hushed apartment and its dreaming tenants are oblivious to what’s taking place a mere five minutes’ walk away.
Hordes of students gather, huddling deeper into their coats, to watch the Shaft fall. Some are there to pay their last respects, some holler and cheer at the destruction. No matter your opinion, the fall of the seemingly timeless Drexel Shaft is finally, truly at hand. No more false alarms or empty threats, The Shaft is really about to die. At 7:45 a.m., there is a shockwave, a cloud of dust, and a hole in the sky.
The student body offers mixed opinions about the demise of the Drexel Shaft after eighty years of its constant presence. Some, such as senior Kevin Martin and junior Brad Harding, applaud the demolition and its potential consequences.
“The Shaft, for a lot of students, represented the unfortunately bureaucratic nature of Drexel,” says Martin, calling the Shaft “symbolic of being violated both emotionally and financially in any attempt to conduct a peaceful and fulfilling relationship with a college’s nature. I feel,” he goes on to say, “it measures the importance of getting rid of an old, inefficient way of doing things.”
Harding, while pleased with the removal of an “eyesore” from the landscape of Philadelphia and Drexel University, has a different take on the implications of a post-Shaft Drexel. “Now that it’s gone, students (myself included) won’t have a place where they can put away that hate, so instead, hopefully, they will use it as a driving force to actually confront the administration.”
Others were saddened by the loss of the Shaft, like pre-junior Anna Petrone, who believes the Shaft “symbolized Drexel’s sense of humor” and cited it as a “symbol of Drexel pride.”
Junior Elyssa Cusimano views it from a strictly aesthetic standpoint: “I felt that the Shaft brought something interesting and beautiful to the Philadelphia skyline, with its old architecture and unique shape.”
The first view I had of the Drexel Shaft post-implosion came around 6:30 a.m. the following Monday morning. Hot orange light fell on the remains, lurid, a castrated man.
It was horrible.
I never saw the Shaft as a symbol of faulty administration, but instead as a victim of it, a rebel, big and ugly — and comforting. That sweet, sad old smokestack always seemed to have a bigger heart than any of the cold, glittering, expensive new dormitories and facilities.
I guess that’s just the Drexel Shaft for you — but it doesn’t seem so funny anymore.
Emily Homrok is a junior studying Film & Video Production. She interns for the Drexel Publishing Group and writes for the Philadelphia Examiner. She is Poetry Editor of FirstStep Press’ Stepping Stones Magazine, and her poetry is forthcoming in Gargoyle Magazine.
Subscribe to RSS
