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The Daily Northwestern

Walking up the metallic mesh stairwells of the new Benjamin W. Slivka Science and Engineering Residential College, windows stretch from floor to ceiling, with views of the large recreation rooms on each floor and the freshly laid grass surrounding the building.

The new hall houses about 140 residents who moved in last week, replacing Lindgren Hall as the science and engineering residential college.

The modern dorm, which cost $15.1 million to construct, is a drastic change from the more intimate Lindgren. To fill the new building, the residential college has more than doubled in size. Lindgren housed about 60 students.

“Lindgren was so small so everyone knew people,”said Gokul Kumar, vice president of Slivka. “We have to try a little harder here.”

Slivka students live in nine self-contained suites of double- and single- occupancy rooms, which each have two bathrooms with a shower and handicapped-accessible toilet. But the suites can limit interaction between students from different suites, said Kumar, a McCormick sophomore, so dorm leaders have designed activities to get people out of their own suites.

Some residents, however, said they found the layout of Slivka, with its kitchenettes on each floor, more desirable in comparison to other dorms.

Nick Disabato, a McCormick junior who has lived in 610 Lincoln and Elder Hall, said the singles in Slivka