Major housing changes coming

Sophomores and juniors examining their room draw options for next year may be surprised: Little and Edwards halls will not be available.

Starting next fall, Little will become part of Rockefeller College and Edwards will house students from both Rocky and Mathey colleges. The switch will provide the required number of beds for the underclassmen displaced by the closure of Holder and Hamilton halls.

As part of the University's plan to modernize campus dorms, Hamilton will undergo renovation over the next two years and Holder will be closed for one year.

Construction on Holder will begin in June and the dorm is expected to be reoccupied by fall 2005, Director of Physical Planning Jon Hlafter said.

Though Hlafter also said work on Hamilton should not begin until June 2005, the University's undergraduate housing website did not list any Hamilton rooms for the upcoming year.

The closure of the two dormitories will increase the number of single-occupancy rooms in the two residential colleges.

"It seems that they're pushing a lot of freshmen into singles and I don't know if that's a good idea. Living in a quad at the beginning of my freshman year, I met some of my best friends here," said Erin Ebbel '06, who hopes to live in a quad again next year. "I don't know if [Edwards is] a good building to put freshmen into."

Of the 83 rooms in Edwards, 78 are singles.

"Sharing a room with somebody is a good thing," said Antoine Kahn, master of Mathey College. "Learning how to cope with others is part of the college experience and it is also part of the fun."

Some students, though, are excited about the changes.

"I think [the renovations are] a good thing," said Jeffrey Wayno '07, who lives in Buyers Hall. "Holder is falling apart. Some of the people in it don't like it. Little was recently renovated so next year all of the dorms in Rocky will be nice."

Patton, Blair, Little, Dod and Witherspoon have all been renovated over the past five years.

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Though he is planning on living in a quad next year, Wayno said he thinks the addition of Edwards to Rocky will benefit current freshmen who may prefer different living arrangements.

"A lot of sophomores like singles and it seems that these possibilities are really limited right now," he said. "This will give them more options."

To offset the loss of upperclassman rooms, the new Ellipse Dormitory — located south of Butler College — will open next year.

However, some students are not pleased with its location.

"I'm an engineer so I have to walk over to the E-quad every day. If I end up in Ellipse I'll be pretty upset," said Kamil Choudhury '06, who hopes to draw into Patton.

But he did not think that students living in the new dorm would feel isolated from their classmates.

"Ellipse is pretty big so I think there will be a large collection of juniors in there," he said.

Renovations on campus will continue long after the consturction on Holder and Hamilton have concluded.

The refurbishment is part of an ongoing process to modernize older buildings.

Few external changes will be made during the renovations. The plumbing and wiring will be replaced, floors restored and new lighting installed. "Basically the interior of the building [will be] made new," Hlafter said.

But the renovations are also part of an effort to upgrade campus accommodations in conjunction with the opening of the sixth residential college in 2006.

"Whitman College will not be complete until a few years from now. Other renovations that we hope to occur in the Butler area will occur after that, so this is a multi-year effort to upgrade the quality of life in the dormitories in the residential colleges in particular," Hlafter said.