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March 3, 2006 > Opinion > College construction should be balanced

College construction should be balanced

To the average south college student, the north colleges are a mysterious land — the source of a few friends and parties and the occasional good lunch. But students from the north colleges are much more likely to frequent the south colleges, even if just on the way to Autry Court. North and south are not so polarized that Rice has two separate campuses, but certainly more interaction and balance between the two halves is desirable. With that in mind, we hope the next two colleges are not both built in the south. (See story, page 1.) Instead, either both colleges should be built in the north or they should be split between north and south.

Building both colleges in the north, closer to Duncan and Herzstein halls than the current north colleges, would probably require connecting the two to a new servery — certainly nothing else can be attached to the existing North Servery. The result would be favorable to undergraduate culture: Students from south colleges would not have to walk as far to eat with northern friends, and students at the new north colleges would have a closer commute to south colleges and the student activities held near the center of campus.

On the other hand, it would probably make more logistical sense to build one of the two new colleges in the field formerly occupied by Wiess College, since there is more space on the south side. Then that college could be connected to the existing Hanszen-Wiess Servery — provided that servery expands, since it is bursting at the seams with students already. The second college could be built in the north with a kitchen of its own. Even under this set-up, the new north college would still be closer to the center of campus than Brown, Jones and Martel colleges, so north-south interaction would hopefully increase.

As for what these colleges should look like, we support halls — either interior or exterior — to force nerdy students to talk to each other. Suites and plentiful singles are important, but so are doubles for freshmen. And we encourage the architects not to immediately use a uniform set-up, such as the one Wiess and Martel have followed, but to consider an orientation more like the old wings at Baker, Hanszen and Will Rice — in which there are a wide variety of room types.

It will take more than two new colleges if on-campus housing is to keep up with the enrollment increase, and we agree that renovating the “new” sections of Baker, Hanszen and Will Rice is the best way to address this shortfall. Those rooms are some of the least comfortable on campus, yet renovating them would not be as invasive as, say, tearing down Lovett College. And if these (actually new) new sections had four floors instead of their current two, 75 beds per college could easily be added. Such an expansion would not upset the familial nature of the colleges, since Baker, Hanszen and Will Rice are currently among the smaller colleges.

But completely tearing down half a college is not trivial, and we think this transition will be easier if a “swing space” is used. After a building for a new college is built but before it is named or occupied, students from Baker could live there for a year while Baker is renovated, then move back into Baker the next year and be replaced by students from Hanszen — and so on until the renovations are complete and the new college takes over the three-year-old building.

If the next two colleges are carefully planned and executed, Rice will be a more social place, and south college students will stop having to put “here there be dragons” on the northern portions of their campus maps.

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