Edens is Eddie Hull's favorite quadrangle.
He told me so over Diet Cokes in Alpine, on a June day so hot the men doing the Few construction project were probably longing for the air conditioning system they were overhauling.
But I suspect Hull, dean of residence life and housing services, confesses some favoritism for every dorm in his kingdom-for Craven, blessed with proximity; for Crowell's tocking tower and horseshoe-shaped Keohane's luck; for the Wanny fire lane, Kilgo's AC and the Smart Home's shining LEED medal. Yes, even the ugly stepsister of the Gothic Wonderland has its redeeming qualities.
Early in RoomPix '08, I resigned myself to the long adventure through Wonderland that is the West-to-Edens hike, knowing singles in Kilgo or Wannamaker would disappear long before my selection window opened. So I became more and more curious about the far-off quad, plucking a 162-sq. foot plot as though it were labeled "PICK ME."
My new home should leave me in good company: I'll be one of just 157 junior women living on West, the rest of us bound for flats abroad or shacking up on Central or jumping ship to live in Durham, according to data provided by RLHS Coordinator Jen Frank.
But my last year on Campus Proper may mark the end of Housing As We Know It.
The University is pouring $20 million and seven months of sweat into fixing Few, working from May to December to overhaul Variable Air Volume control boxes, renovate the restrooms, upgrade the fire alarm system and handicap accommodations and touch-up the infrastructure.
RLHS told Few residents in early Fall that the Quad would be renovated, hinting at mold-breeding moisture in the air system. We shouldn't worry, RLHS assured us, because there was little health risk. But they would need to get residents out of the non-codified quad as soon as possible. Naturally, with this information, in addition to the roaches that infested the restrooms early in the semester and my increasing conviction that my photographs were curling under these conditions, my apocalyptic paranoia was doubled.
But for all Few's flaws-that there was a single functioning toilet on my hall, that showers occasionally put me at one with nature, that the laundry room was an eternity away-I loved it anyway, because it was mine. And so a little piece of me broke with every bit of demolition.
And a lot of demolition had to be done just to access the utilities, says Wes Foushee, the project executive for LeChase Construction, which is doing the renovation.
"It was only sensible to include architectural upgrades," he told me, which made the renovation fairly comprehensive and time-consuming, a luxury LeChase doesn't really have.
Hull, however, is confident LeChase, a New York firm with offices in Durham, will finish the project as scheduled despite the crunched timeline.
"Oh, don't even think about that happening!" Hull says when pressed on the possibility even want to think about that happening."
With good reason, too. But my friends and I thought about it over queso at The Dillo, and it's a calculated risk: If Few remains closed to residents for Spring 2009, it could cost the University 440 residents-worth of forgone housing and dining opportunities for the semester.
The University is counting on the abroad bubble to account for lost bedspace, releasing some juniors from on-campus housing contracts and permitting some sophomores to live on Central. University policy states that all undergraduate students are required to live on campus for three years, a policy Hull notes can be reconsidered in extraordinary circumstances. It's not the first time it's been done, either: Two hundred eighty-seven juniors were released from on-campus housing when they returned from abroad last Spring.
The sophomores living on Central next year are another exception, borne out of an error in the fledgling online RoomPix process.
The morning of March 30, when RoomPix ended, 58 sophomore women were bedless. "It became uncomfortably clear that we're going to run out of space for women," Hull remembers. "We went back and [we had] pulled numbers from the wrong thing. And it was a simple human error. The process was working."
Hull says the circumstance perhaps presents an opportunity to rethink housing policy, waxing philosophic at the notion that assignments based on year could be limiting.
"We think, 'I'm a sophomore because I'm in my second year. Being a sophomore doesn't define me, I'm defined by who I am, what I think, what I am interested [in] and does that-should that-limit me to living in this building?' I don't know that it should," Hull says.
Since then, the rising sophomores were relocated, after RLHS discovered spots on West or invited them to move to Central Campus.
Central isn't exactly a vision, although the prospect of bats twinkling in the rafters, as they are wont to do, made me a rabid fan of the hard-knocked buildings when I lived there last summer. But when the Central renovation project is complete, "there will be no 'Central Campus,'" according to Dean of Undergraduate Education Steve Nowicki, who drafted "Uniting Old and New: A Vision for the Integrated Development of Duke's West and Central Campus."
The renovation of Duke's 200-acre middle campus has been in the works for years. But what's risen from the ashes of the plans oft-scorned and the ground that was, at one point, expected to break in Summer 2007, is a massive reimagining that classes a quarter of a century from now will see to completion. "How we design it in a way that it has a better than likely chance of responding flexibly to change over decades is not a science; it's an art. And it's informed by lots of opinion, envisioning and dreaming about what could be, and then trying to set it in place today so that it'll work tomorrow," Hull explains, and it's clear he believes in this feeling, rustling up a vision of the new campus with his enthusiastic hand gestures.
The design phase is expected to take another six months, with infrastructure work beginning in 2009 and buildings opening in early 2011, according to a University statement. "This is going to be, for those of us in contemporary Duke, one of the most exciting projects we've ever embarked on. It's huge-it's huge!" Hull says. "For students, I hope they're able to look back and say, 'Yeah, I was there when it happened. That was really cool.'"
But there are, I suppose, darker corners of housing where problems with campus culture overall go to nest.
A report released in 2007 by the Campus Culture Initiative Steering Committee, found that parts of Duke's culture were fragmented. A nine-month gestation yielded 36 pages that weighed aspects of the campus community and made recommendations for change, considering policies that were in infancy and those that were borne out of deep-seated displeasure.
The proposals centered on undergraduate life, but aimed to break down constructs that prevented engagement. The report delineates some of the motivations behind the Residential Experience and the flaws the CCI hoped to address, among them a lack of social space for unaffiliated students, the disproportionate minority makeup of Central Campus, the tendency of upperclassmen to "self-segregate," and the perceived dominance of selective living groups.
The following September, Provost Peter Lange released a report of his own. But the Interim Report on the Undergraduate Experience recommends reconsidering some of the CCI's proposals, including a more controversial recommendation to eliminate selective living groups.
"I think there were a fair number of suggestions that said, 'Well wait a minute. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater,'" Hull says. "There's a lot of good that can come out of group living experiences, so if there are issues with the way the model is working now, let's consider the model without abandoning it."
In fact, the administration appears to have done an about-face on that suggestion, advocating a pluralistic community, recognizing the advantages to adding selective groups.
Duke, in fact, is moving toward a 40-20-40 living model, with 40 percent of space allocable to "social" SLGs, 20 to learning communities and 40 percent to unaffiliated students. It will start with a pilot selective living group blocking on West: a group of sophomores interested in social justice issues. From there, Hull says RLHS will be able to refine the requirements for future groups to coalesce.
So what else will RLHS build on?
Hull says RLHS has a number of other initiatives planned for the school year, including taking a look at the Residence Coordinator system, assessing the Faculty-in-Residence program and soliciting input from students. According to reports from 2006, it seems dear-old Edens isn't on deck for the next renovations. The University had planned to revamp for Crowell Quadrangle, followed by Craven Quadrangle, then Few, Southgate Dormitory and Gilbert-Addoms Dormitory.
Though I doubt I'll lose affection for my previous residences (AC-less Alspaugh, Central-by-Erwin, Few and the Smart Home), however they may change after I become a Durham Resident, I have hopes that Edens's prettier features will grow on me.
And even if it isn't my favorite quadrangle, I imagine it'll still cushion me from the sound of hammers and men tearing into my old home, at least till the dust settles.
-Chelsea Allison
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