The Public Affairs Residential College, born from a 1980s communal living philosophy, underwent a brief inspection by university officials Wednesday to determine if some of its doubles could be converted into singles next fall.
Two officials from the University Housing Administration conducted the walkthrough at the request of PARC residents. The sizes of all rooms were checked, but the focus was on a set of small doubles, one belonging to Weinberg freshman Rajni Chandrasekhar.
“There’s room for two beds, and maybe two feet in between,” Chandrasekhar said. “Our dressers have to be put in the closets. I don’t like to spend much time in my room. All I do is sleep there.”
The university will make its final decision regarding PARC rooms near the end of Winter Quarter, according to Mark D’Arienzo, associate director of the University Housing Administration.
“It has to do with a different architectural style,” D’Arienzo said. “PARC was built at a time when there was an interest in suite living. With the suite arrangement, the space you’d come to think of as living space in your room was placed into a common area.”
Every year Northwestern’s campus housing ends up with extra rooms, so moving students out of cramped doubles would not be a problem. The only issue is the potentially lost revenue from residents per room, he said.
Robert Lavenstein, Communication sophomore and dorm president, said his dorm has a capacity of 113 people but a population of 99.
PARC was built in 1981, along with East Fairchild, West Fairchild, North Mid-Quads and South Mid-Quads, D’Arienzo said. The following year, 1835 Hinman and Jones Residential College were built.
Some of those dorms might be re-evaluated in the future, he said. NMQ and SMQ were already re-evaluated over the past few years.
“The first phase happened about six or seven years ago,” he said. He said that some corner rooms were shaped like trapezoids instead of rectangles. “Two years ago, there was a set of oddly shaped doubles. The desk furniture made it so you couldn’t open your door all the way, and the beds could only be bunked and only in one place.”
Some doubles in Kemper Hall and Shepard Residential College were recently converted to singles.
Dorms built before the 1980s were typically designed with rectangular rooms aligned against long hallways, giving students more living space, D’Arienzo said. Keeping up with students’ shifting desires is a continual mission of campus housing.
“Students change their needs, change their wants,” he said. “Personal computers were nonexistent 20 years ago. Students now look at their residence hall rooms as their homes.”
Reach Nitesh Srivastava at [email protected].
