Renovations Planned, Debated by Faculty and Students

“Northlawn inhabited by MALES?! Oakwood being torn down?” So read the tagline of an email sent out about the Monday, Feb. 11 meeting of the Residential Living and Learning Task Force. As revolutionary as these ideas may sound, the task force appears likely to recommend both to the President’s Cabinet when they meet later today.

The task force was approved at the beginning of this year in order to provide recommendations, rather than to create policy. Therefore, none of the policies discussed are concrete; the President’s Cabinet must act on them. That said, the task force has discussed many different aspects of residential housing, from prioritizing needs to specific plans to address more immediate concerns.

The most important and demanding of the housing concerns is the lack of sufficient upperclassmen housing, especially in the wake of rule changes requiring all juniors to live on campus. This has been addressed by a recommendation of the task force that has already come into effect, the changing of the Parkwood Apartments to on-campus housing. Though there were concerns about the change from current residents, students have jumped right in, creating competition for spaces.

Since that concern has been at least temporarily addressed, the task force examined their second priority, that of getting rid of under-utilized dormitories that are in less than desirable conditions, namely Oakwood and Roselawn. Because Oakwood is a more traditionally underclassmen residence hall and the Parkwood Apartments change addressed upperclassmen housing, the task force will recommend that Oakwood be demolished and rebuilt as soon as possible. The process would take a full year, and would either start August 2008, December 2008, or August 2009.

Some Oakwood residents agree that the dorm should be rebuilt. “We don’t have a ceiling,” says sophomore Nate Derstine, “just foam ceiling tiles.” Senior David Gish, a former three-year resident of Oakwood, mentioned the lack of air conditioning, a complaint that Derstine agreed with.

There is, however, significant concern among students for the new dorm to be built sustainably. Derstine and fellow sophomore and member of the green design class, Jon Spicher, raised these concerns at the Feb. 11 task force meeting, and, according to Jan Kauffman, a member of the force, their comments were taken to heart. “This building will be green; that’s our first concern. I’d want to have a building that is energy efficient and looks nice sooner rather than later, but our timetable is dependent on quality. If we need to take extra time in order to make it green, we’ll do it,” she says.

Because the process of demolition would take a full year, there would need to be some sort of temporary way to deal with students that would have lived in Oakwood. The idea that is getting the most consideration in the task force is to make Northlawn into a co-ed Residence Hall for the duration of the construction.

Students have many differing opinions about this idea. First year Maria Zehr makes the pragmatic observation that “Northlawn would become a hub of activity. The cafeteria is [there], everyone would have friends [there].” Kauffman agrees, but feels that the center of underclassmen life would probably shift back to the present Quad after the reconstruction of Oakwood.

Some current Northlawn residents feel that the shift would be a good thing, or at the very least wouldn’t cause a significant change. Sophomore Sarah Fields says, “There’s no difference in privacy” with the addition of a male floor, and that “there are still open hours.” She also feels like there would be no significant increase in noise. “We’re probably as loud as they are in Oakwood, but our walls don’t let us hear the people next to us.”

Not all people share these sentiments, however. When Junior Sarah Kalichman transferred from a school that only had separate male and female dorms, she found the option of living in an all-female residence hall attractive. “I just think that as a Christian university, the option should be there,” she says. Other students have mentioned that people enjoy how quiet Northlawn is, a quality that they attribute to its single-gender status.

Many thoughts float around about what will be done after construction is finished, from making Elmwood and Maplewood all-male and all-female, respectively, to a return to an all-female Northlawn and the construction of several small-group living buildings where Roselawn is right now. Kauffman says it best when she states, “The year immediately after the construction would be a trial period. We’ll have to reevaluate at that point.”