10,000 dollars worth of damage done to new science building

"Today is not the best day for me," said Centralia College Vice President Steve Ward.

That's understandable, considering in the early morning on April 1, vandals caused about $10,000 worth of damage to the newly-opened $32 million Science Building.

Ward said it looked as if the vandals broke into the main glass door, got inside the building and headed upstairs toward the chemistry and biology classrooms.

"They had muddy shoes on that left prints on the ground that led straight to the chemistry rooms, possibly to find chemicals to make drugs of some sort," Ward said.

Currently no chemicals are in those rooms so the vandals couldn't have gotten anything.

"I heard about it this morning, I know there were fundraising items stolen and ruined," said Brianna Cooper, Olympia. "I think it is really unfortunate because we as the surrounding community are taxpayers who contributed to this building and so this will affect everyone."

Ward said the vandals broke glass, damaged furniture and basically anything that was in their path they tried to do some sort of damage.

They even stole and damaged T-shirts, hats and other items that were going to be used for Survivor Club's Bike Night or Disability Awareness Fundraiser event this Saturday.

"It's really unfortunate that the fundraising items got stolen because a motorcycle organization donated that stuff to us for the event," said Barbara Oswald, director of Special Services. "But I'm still hoping Bike Night will be a fun event."

Ward guesses this attack is drug or meth related because there are no rivals of the college that he knows of.

"I bet students did this for some fun and excitement, that's wrong and pretty sad," said Aaron Kaiser, Centralia.

Ward was also able point look at the positive aspects that people can get from this experience.

"The good is that considering how hard the vandals really tried to break everything they could in the building, the building really held up nicely," Ward said.

There's evidence that vandals tried to break into a lot more windows and doors but some were too strong to break.

"That shows our building materials are very strong," Ward said.

One thing that did confuse Ward is that they tried to get into the elevator mechanical room, and he's not sure why.

"If they were to mess with the mechanical areas of the elevator that is very dangerous," Ward said. "These people busted a lot of glass and damaged a lot of nice property, it's just a really stupid, malicious and ignorant thing to do."

Ward said the college will definitely be fixing the damage as quickly as possible.

A lot of the damaged items have already been replaced or cleaned up but some items such as custom glass and furniture will take a little bit to be replaced.

"We have literarily just finished up with the building so it's a good thing this happened now because the contractors are close by to help fix the damage," Ward said.

Ward also pointed out that the college will address stronger security measures soon.

"There are currently no security cameras in the building, but now I'm thinking it would be a good and rational idea to have them after this event," Ward said. "There's going to be a lot of resentment to who ever did this from a lot of people because the whole community was involved in the new building process."

If anyone has any tips as to who might've done the vandalizing, contact the Centralia Police Department at (360) 330-7680 or Steve Ward at ext. 233 or Gil Elder at ext. 218.

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