Don’t you just hate it when you go out and buy something like a new VCR, refrigerator or engineering building and just when the warranty is up it breaks? Apparently, Howe Hall came with a limited one-year warranty to see how it faired throughout the seasons. Good thing, too, because the building is having a few problems.Anybody who has ever bought an appliance from Sears knows that is the standard, especially when the sales associate, let’s call him Ted, tries to get you to go for the extended five-year warranty. You know it is a gamble and if anything happens to your hot-air popcorn popper or Dustbuster within five years and you don’t have that policy you are up a certain kind of creek without a paddle.The reason products come with warranties these days is because the manufacturer knows they sold you a piece of garbage.Let’s face it, if Howe Hall had been built by the Romans, it wouldn’t have a leaky roof. Hordes of Macedonian slaves would have worked tirelessly to make sure the building were built and built right.But we don’t live in Ancient Rome, we live in 21st Century America where buildings are constructed quickly and cheaply with the expectation that they will one day be torn down for a strip mall or galleria.In this age of lowered expectations, it has become far too easy to accept leaky roofs, crumbling concrete and bathroom stall doors that don’t close. Let’s get the guys who built this gargantuan construct back in here with a few local building inspectors and make sure this thing isn’t going to be another Towers falling apart on campus well before its time.editorialboard: Carrie Tett, Greg Jerrett, Katie Goldsmith, Andrea Hauser and Jocelyn Marcus