USU Political Turf Battle

(I'm very deliberately not using specific names in this post. If you know who is involved, you already know their names; if not, you can find out easily enough if you're interested.)

Two USU departments are going through a nasty territorial dispute.

The first, Department A, has offices in the Merrill library right now, conveniently located in the middle of campus. Unfortunately, it won't be long before they are evicted. (No more library means no more offices for them.) To resolve the situation, the Department A asked Department B for space in another building, an on-campus residence building called hereafter "Building 1".

The request was rejected by the Department B for several reasons. The space in Building 1: (a) includes some of Department B's offices, (b) includes the residence of the Area Director, and (c) is right in the middle of their most financially secure and stable area. Instead of giving up their office space and evicting someone they work closely with, Department B offered part of Building 2, which has (a) twice the space and (b) less financial impact on the department, (c) but isn't as close to the campus itself.

In theory, that should have ended it. Instead, the Department A went to a high-level administrator to request the space. If you know anything about this administrator (like, say, the fact that their spouse is a major figure in Department A), this probably qualifies as a conflict of interest. Department A also has people in Building 1 on a daily basis, taking notes about how many people are using the space, and asking the area director why he needs to live there.

Department B, meanwhile, is doing everything they can to retain possession of the space in Building 1.

Basically, it's turning into a situation where competing dogs marked the same territory, and now they're fighting to see who gets to keep it.