By Caitlyn Pray
Student Reporter
An ongoing, strategic project—that’s how some might describe South Hall as far as renovations are concerned.
A few years ago Fryer was completely renovated along with certain floors of Coronado. This left some wondering if South Hall might be the next to experience a breaking makeover, but it seems the makeover has been in the works all along.
“There is no major renovation project planned for South Hall to the same scale that there was for Fryer and Coronado,” said Dr. David Pecha, vice president for administration of Northwestern. “That size of a project we are not prepared to do from a money standpoint. What we are doing on the dorms and what we have done is made a long-term plan of how we want to constantly be making improvements on the dorm.”
Although some residents of South Hall may be disappointed to hear no major renovation project is set just yet, Pecha as well as Calleb Mosburg, dean of student affairs, and Kaylyn Hansen, former director of housing, ensure that that does not mean progress or projects are not being done.
“One of our ongoing projects we were more serious about in our budget meetings for the dorms when I was there was making sure we got some showers remodeled in South Hall every summer,” Hansen said.
Pecha explained that the project and selection of showers isn’t random or without care and thought.
“What we’ve done in the last few years is we’ve identified some showers in South Hall that are just worn out. They’re leaking and some of the hardware hasn’t always been the best in some of those, so we identified which were the most critical, then moved on down the list, so every summer we try to replace four to six shower units and focus on those.”
Among the general renovations that residents might expect, mold-resistant flooring and walls and updated fixtures are some of the additional project parts that go into the renovating the showers, Mosburg said. Although this may seem insignificant to some, the little things do add up, especially when they are improvements made all across the dormitory.
“As for ongoing maintenance, we will always find rooms to paint, carpets to clean or furniture to update and any other things that might need some attention. All of these things we’ve tried to make sure have been replaced over the last few years,” Pecha said.
Of those different projects, Mosburg recounts a few of the different places the university has worked to improve, as well as the latest project that was done at South Hall referring to the heating and cooling quality of the suites.
“We’ve put some money into some of the public areas: the movie room, the lounge areas, study areas, specifically in South Hall, but also in some of the others,” Mosburg said. “Also, the most recent project has been when we had about 40 units that our heating and air maintenance staff were able to go through and replace a lot of parts of, so it made it where there were heating and cooling controls per room instead of just for the suite in South. I think that’s another part of what we’re trying to get done for the whole building of South Hall in the future.”
Of course, rarely are large-scale improvements finished for free. Each individual who plans operations for the dorms knows that there is only a set amount of what can be done with what funds they have and those must be planned strategically.
“We’d love to do it all at once, but we’ve got to be strategic about how we can do that and what dollars we have to use on renovations,” Mosburg said.
“We look at things as far as what dollars do we have available to do some renovations on campus and I can tell you this: President Cunningham has been adamant about making improvements in those dorms and we’ve kind of put together a pretty good plan as far as how strategically throughout how we’re going to do it.”
Although the administration has high goals set for what improvements they are planning to start, pursue and complete regarding the dorms, such as finishing the last two of the six showers and bathrooms in Ament Hall, finishing the sidewalk construction near Coronado Hall and continuing to renovate showers and minor construction projects around South, the university makes it a priority to listen to students’ concerns and fit them into its consideration when deciding on projects.
“Each spring we do formal budget hearings where each area kind of comes forward and makes their budget requests to the university,” Pecha said.
“Those are open to the public, students, faculty; we’ll have them in the student center laid out with the time blocks and plan. That’s really the time when students can come and listen or ask something, but I also encourage what students and residents of those halls might have ideas about—what things could make dorm life better or if they see some problems that aren’t being addressed to say those.”
“As we have these budget hearings, these are certainly times they can bring those requests forward and we might make a budget alteration. We try to be very transparent on campus; we try to have those hearings where people can come forward and tell us what their needs are. We can’t always satisfy everybody’s wants, but at least we can see what we can do, and maybe if we can’t do something this year we can try another year or two down the road.”
The idea of bringing up issues of leaky faucets and poor lighting may seem intimidating to students when presented in front of university administration. Pecha, however, encourages such comments in true honesty so improvements may be made.
“A lot of times people don’t think they can voice their opinion or recommendations or concerns, but we try to be a very open campus—a very open administration—to try to get feedback from employees and students,” Pecha said. “I can’t be in every building every day, and I don’t see everything, so if someone can give me a heads up on something, I look at that as a positive, not a negative.”
Despite the many different duties and responsibilities that the housing office faces on a daily basis, the university urges its students to not lose hope in renovations, fixes and attention towards their living areas.
“It’s nothing that we’ve put South Hall on a back-burner to say South Hall has been the one [dorm] with least attention,” Mosburg said. “There have been a lot of things we have done in there; just not as much as on a high-scale or wide-scale as we did with Fryer and Coronado, but we’re working on it.
The girls have done a great job of taking care of that facility and cleaning it and we commend them on that. We’re making progress and hopefully we will in the near future see some bigger projects taking place.
To say what that’s going to be, I can’t for sure say, but it will be along with the approach of showers, looking at the AC units, as well and just continuing to make progress.”