Trisha WolfOver approximately the next six years, student housing on campus will undergo a major overhaul, with the traditional freshman “shoebox” dorms being replaced by new buildings on the South 40 and new apartments in the North Side housing area.
Construction on the new apartments, which will be built east of the Village, near the Millbrook apartments, is slated to begin this spring or early summer, according to Dean of Students Justin Carroll. The construction will last between 12-15 months, and is expected to be completed by fall 2007.
Students’ preferences have been taken into account in planning the new apartment buildings, according to Carroll, who frequently meets with the Residential Student Advisory Board, a committee of students that communicates with the University about Residential Life matters.
“We know from student feedback that students want to live on campus in apartment-style housing,” said Carroll. “By adding more apartment living, that’s something we always hope to offer.”
The new apartments will provide about 280 additional beds and will likely have four-person units with single bedrooms. Each unit will have a kitchen, a living room and possibly two bathrooms.
Although including several two-, three- and five-person units is under consideration, Residential Life is trying to steer away from the larger six-, seven- and eight-person units in Millbrook.
“We feel based on experience that if we’re really trying to convince upperclassmen, and our goal is to have juniors and seniors live there, smaller units are more popular,” said Carroll. “The smaller units usually go first in Millbrook.”
Sophomore Miriam Truppin-Brown believes that these new apartments will be beneficial.
“I think people seem to think that the only way you can live on campus is to live in the Village or on the 40,” said Truppin-Brown. “An alternative is Millbrook. In Millbrook you get the benefits of living on campus but in a more independent living situation. I would think students would want [the new buildings] because competition for housing is fierce. Any opportunity that allows people to get the housing they want is a good thing. If I weren’t going abroad I might consider living there.”
The new apartments would play an important role in meeting the demand for housing as the freshmen dorms on the South 40 are torn down.
“For upperclassmen, we can shift them to new apartment areas, and then the following year, take down one or possibly two buildings [on the South 40] at one time and be more aggressive about completing construction there,” said Carroll.
A tentative plan has been proposed for the destruction and replacement of the freshman dorms that will remain after Liggett has been torn down this summer.
The schedule for destruction, which is subject to change, would begin with Beaumont in fall 2007, followed by Lee, Umrath and Rubelmann in fall 2008, 2009 and 2010 respectively, said Jim Severine, associate director and manager of building services for Residential Life. By fall 2011, all of these dormitories would be replaced.
Whether these new residential colleges would be connected like the new Liggett and Koenig residence halls or remain separated is yet to be decided, said Carroll.
Although the designs for the new dormitories on the South 40 are still in their early stages, they will provide facilities superior to those of the old dorms, according to Severine.
“Overall, students have been really pleased with the designs that have been presented to them,” said Severine. “Things they were commenting on [that they wanted in the new dorms] were better lighting in rooms and increased study space. They’ve liked the bathroom layouts, and the double and triple spaces.”
The larger triple rooms in the new dorms will be less cramped than those in the older freshman dorms, said Severine.
“Triple spaces [in the new dorms] will be much more accommodating,” said Severine. “They are specifically designed for three students, where sometimes [in the old dorms] you get the situation where another bed was shoved in there.”
Freshman Jamie Hanley, who lives in Liggett, will be disappointed to see her current home go.
“It’s sad, because a lot of other freshmen will be able to go back to their dorms with memories and we won’t have that,” said Hanley. “There are lots of things about the old dorms people really like and the fact that we’re getting rid of them is really upsetting, but there are lots of things people like about the new dorms, too.”
Despite students’ sentimental attachment to their freshman dorms, it is necessary to replace them, said Carroll.
“These dorms were built in late ’50s, and they really have been well maintained, and students become very attached to where they live regardless of whether it’s new or old,” said Carroll. “But the point is that some of the behind-the-scenes things are really antiquated….They were built at a time when campuses were building what they could afford, but they’ve served us well. We looked at them to see if we could use existing buildings and rearrange them, but found there wasn’t really any way to go about it.”
– With additional reporting by Mandy Silver and Josh Hantz