Macye Farrar, News Editor
Perched on top of Carnegie Hall, the Cordell-Lorenz observatory stares up at the stars. Inside that observatory, Professor Doug Durig spends every night studying the night sky and passing his extensive knowledge onto his students.
Most of his beard reaches his mid-chest, but there is a small, braided section that dips well below his chest. When asked about his unique beard, Durig said, “I haven’t cut my beard since [the university] sold my equipment.”
The equipment was allegedly sold back in 2017. The roof of Carnegie Hall was renovated due to draining issues on the roof. In order to fix the issues, Facilities Management—then called Physics Plant Services (PPS)—had to remove some important equipment from the Cordell–Lorenz Observatory.
Durig was told by then PPS Director Michael Gardner that the planned renovations would interfere with much of the research equipment. He promised Durig that the equipment would be returned after the renovations were finished.
But Durig was told a different story when he spoke with one of the contractors conducting the renovation.
He said, “The contractor who was out there told me, ‘They’re lying to you. They sold it already.’ And I said, ‘What?’ They said, ‘Yeah, they never intended to save the observatory. When they took the materials off the roof, they put it in the recycling bin and then they took those materials over to the recycling center and sold them.’
There were other justifications for why the University did not replace the equipment. It was difficult for Gardner and his crew to grasp the necessity of some of the lost equipment. “He was looking at the roll-off and he couldn’t understand it,” Durig said. “He said it’s a Rube Goldberg Machine. A Rube Goldberg Machine is a thing with a lot of moving parts that does nothing.”
Roll-offs are vital equipment for observatories that protect telescopes from the elements. Durig said, “The whole idea of the roll-off is when it’s off, you can point the telescope at the top of the sky, and when the sun goes up, you cover it up so they don’t get destroyed by the sunlight or rain.”
Without the protection and storage that the roll-off provided, the observatory’s efficiency took a sharp dip. “I do have some telescopes out here that are just this size, or twelve inch telescopes that I use for teaching my classes,” Durig said. “But they’re limited and I can’t see as dim… They just don’t work as well because they’re amateur telescopes.”
Durig has access to more advanced equipment, but because there is no longer a roll-off, he is unable to install them. “I’ve got $25,000 worth of telescopes and mounts and cameras that are sitting unused because I can’t put them in a roll-off.”
He has also dipped into his retirement fund in order to compensate for the lack of proper equipment that the University has yet to compensate for. He said, “So I had to buy all the stuff that I used to teach my classes for a couple of years. I had to spend part of my retirement money to buy what I needed to teach my classes.”
In a 2017 email to Gardner, Durig said,
“PPS now wants to remove as many places as possible where there are connections through the roof. At our previous meeting, it was stated “where there are existing connections through the roof, they can stay.” All of my telescope piers have electrical connections and are anchored through the roof. I thought they could all stay in use after the roof replacement. Now I have been told the two northern mounts must go and the two pop-offs in the middle must go. You can’t tell an astronomer he can’t look North, just like you can’t tell a mathematician he can’t use the number 7, the variable x or pi.”
Also in the email, Durig pointed out how the lack of a roll-off disrupted a student’s research. He said,
“I have a Physics Major who needs the research telescope that was to be housed in the roll-off for her seminar project ASAP next fall. She already had to change her project this spring because we couldn’t install a new research telescope only to remove it for the renovation.”
The advancement in software has helped to compensate for the missing equipment. The observatory has access to telescopes in New Mexico. By connecting virtually to the telescopes in New Mexico, students can study the stars in a way that Sewanee’s observatory does not permit due to the absence of the roll-off. “It was nice to have access to the equipment in New Mexico,” Bryce Timms (C ’26), a student who took an Astronomy class during the Advent semester, said.
Despite the improvement of technology, Durig explained that the roll-offs are still a desperately needed addition to the observatory. “One of the University alums saw the picture with our roll-off on it. He was really impressed that we had a roll-off observatory and he made a donation of $100,000,” Durig said.
Durig went on to explain that the absence of the roll-off means that the donation cannot go into effect. He said, “I have $100,000 of equipment, but I have no place to put it.”
Durig is also unsure how much longer he can continue to teach under the current conditions. “I’ll be 64 later this month,” he said, “but I’m not really at retirement age yet. But if I don’t have the research equipment to use, I can’t teach my lab class.”
