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April 21, 2006 > News > New college options considered

New college options considered

By Beko Binder | Thresher Editorial Staff

At its May meeting, the Board of Trustees will attempt to decide how to add 900 beds to campus.

The targeted increased in on-campus housing is a result of President David Leebron’s plan to increase undergraduate enrollment by 30 percent while raising the percentage of students living on campus from 71 to 80 percent.

The Housing Steering Committee is tasked with crafting and proposing a plan to the board. Assistant to the Dean of Undergraduates Matthew Taylor (MS ‘01) said at the Student Association meeting Monday that two of the options the committee is considering call for two new colleges. One plan calls for one north college and one south college — and the other for two new north colleges.

Leebron said the idea of two north colleges came from student input into the Call to Conversation.

“The clearest effect on planning [from the C2C] was the majority student view that we ought to try to build colleges in the north,” Leebron said.

Dean of Undergraduates Robin Forman said many options are on the table and that the only certainty is that there will be a combination of new construction and renovations to existing buildings.

“Most of the options involve two new colleges, but the board has not yet addressed in any direct way any precise plan for construction,” Forman said.

Whether two colleges will be built — and their location if they are built — are still uncertain, Forman said.

Another idea the committee is looking at would connect Lovett, Sid Richardson and Will Rice colleges to a common servery, Taylor said. The plan includes a new wing and commons for Sid that would connect to the servery.

Taylor said at the SA meeting that a new south college could be constructed where Wiess College used to be located —— between Hanszen College and Herring Hall — and that Abercrombie Parking Lot is a possible location for a new north college.

Forman said the proposal will also include plans for renovating existing colleges.

“[We intend to] renovate some of the 1950s wings of the [south] colleges,” Forman said. “In particular, we are looking at possibilities for renovations for Baker, Will Rice, Lovett and Hanszen.”

Taylor said one plan considered would add 100 beds to each college by remodeling existing wings and building new ones. New wings could be added to Hanszen, Lovett, Sid and Will Rice colleges, Taylor said.

Housing and Dining Director Mark Ditman, who is also a member of the committee, said he wants the new colleges to be energy efficient.

“I would like to see a lot of attention paid to ways to reduce energy consumption, whether it be electricity, air conditioning or plumbing,” Ditman said. “There are certain designs that can be made that can either help or hurt that, [such as] how the building is oriented to the sun and the amount of lighting that comes in at different times of the year.”

Forman said the ability to connect housing to residential dining facilities could influence the placement of new colleges.

“It doesn’t seem at all possible to connect another college to the existing North Servery,” Forman said. “Adding any college to the north really requires us to grapple with the issue of food service. On the other hand, a college added to the old Wiess site could potentially be hooked up to the [Hanszen/Wiess] Servery.”

The proposal may also include the construction of new serveries or renovation of old ones, Taylor said.

Ditman said he is also concerned with student safety and that he would like to investigate using biometric access.

“[Biometric fingerprint access] has a certain Big Brother dimension to it, but I think that anybody who has a driver’s license now has a thumbprint on file with the state,” Ditman said. “If there were ways that we could get students in and out of their space without using keys and cards, I think everyone would appreciate it.”

Forman said the proposal will take student interactions into account.

“We have to consider the interaction of the new colleges with the existing colleges, not just from the point of view of dining services, but also the dynamism of the campus,” Forman said. “We want to create, as much as possible, colleges that have a kind of human vibrancy.”

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