Higher ed

or special ed?

I got an email today from our new associate vice president of campus something or another services (the old one having been driven out of the position after some not very savory issues surfaced regarding recent extremely expensive campus construction projects). The part of his email I have excerpted below perplexed me, not necessarily deeply, but at least moderately.

All other areas are also asked to consider placing air conditioning units on a "low" setting when in use or turning them off, particularly when not occupied.

My reading of this sentence seems to require that air conditioning units be the semantic object of occupied. I think if I tried to diagram it, I'd need a 3d+ chart. Perhaps a sentence mobile.

I don't usually quibble over syntax. I'm not a grammar tyrant, but this sentence is needlessly screwy on account of too many high-falutin' syntactic stylings, and that always annoys the crap out of me. Why do bureaucrats love the passive voice so? And why is it that people who have such piss poor written communication skills get these high paying jobs?