Column: Wood’s Stock; If we build it they still can’t afford it, New USU housing could outprice potential tentants
As students bustle in and out of the TSC, ESLC, and other various initialed locations around the Quad, one can’t help but notice the new additions to our campus. More specifically, the new Student Living/Learning Community dorms next to the LDS Institute building fashioned in a comforting colonial red brick that almost resembles the kind of country cottage your grandmother would live in.
What, your grandma didn’t have $40 million to drop on a summer home? Neither did mine.
In fact, it seems like all year long there have been varied reports of the university’s financial woes. Student fees were recently bumped up $13 a semester, free printouts were reduced and countless other departments around campus have been vocalizing their concern about lack of funds and subsequent lack of students.
The new additions include, among other things: the dorms, a new parking terrace and the coming transformation of the well-trafficked Carousel Square into a new Junction-style dining hall for residents of the new residences. I personally have never eaten at Carousel Square, but I know many students who do, and walk past it regularly during lunch hours, always finding a rather full house.
On the other hand, the only people I know who eat at the Junction live in the Towers, bless their hearts, and I have never had the slightest temptation to treat myself to such culinary services.
Campus housing is only at about 80 percent capacity and the new Student Living/Learning Community will be more expensive than any currently operating dorm. I consider myself a decently mathematical man, and based upon my current financial situation, the only way I could afford to pay any more for rent than I currently am would require the selling of my body to science and limiting my well-balanced diet of Ramen and Pop-Tarts to just Ramen, every other day.
While discussing the situation with some of my fellow “dormies,” one of my neighbors said it best, stating that the new residents will all be “rich snobs, with their daddy’s credit cards.” Show me the Scotsman, anyone?
President Albrecht stated in The Statesman last week that he believes the enrollment problem will be corrected in the next 18 months, but one can’t help but wonder if demand for on-campus living will be enough to fill our current buildings, let alone the new uber-dorm and the deep pockets it requires. This entire situation has a creepy “If you build it, they will come” feel to it, and it seems like the university is putting an awfully risky bet on Shoeless Joe Jackson coming back from the dead.
President Albrecht’s estimate also begs the question: why now? If our salvation is truly just around the river bend, why not wait ’til we’re out of the briar patch to start such a hefty construction? I mean, no disrespect to President Albrecht – go Aggies – but it seems that ever since the year began, there’s been a lot of ruckus caused by new “state-of-the-art” additions to our beloved campus.
Meanwhile, the money keeps rolling, and honestly, a million here and a million there – pretty soon, we’re talkin’ real money.
Don’t get me wrong, change is good, and increasingly necessary as time goes by, but it will definitely be interesting to see over the next couple of years what effect these transformations bring to Utah State.
Hopefully our numbers will increase, rich adolescents will decide the on-campus life is the one they’ve been waiting for and Bin Laden will be caught and killed. Wishful thinking? Possibly, but that’s what dreams are made of.
In the meantime, go get a burrito at Carousel Square – it may be your last chance.
Ben Wood is a Statesman columnist. Comments or questions can be sent to bcwood@cc.usu.edu.