As the Kellogg School of Management prepares to build a replacement for the Donald P. Jacobs Center, Northwestern is considering alternate uses for the vacated building: a new student center, perhaps?
University President Morton Schapiro told The Daily NU would be “crazy” not to seriously consider re-purposing parts of the vacated building for additional student center space. But Associated Student Government President Claire Lew said Sunday that a retrofitted Jacobs would not fully meet the needs or goals of ASG’s New Student Center Initiative.
As the University prepares to unveil its final draft of the Strategic Plan defining NU’s needs and goals for the next decade, the NSC Initiative is lobbying the administration to include a new student center in the fundraising plan.
“(Dance Marathon) can’t even fit in Norris any more,” the SESP senior said. “We as a university can’t even house the amount of passions and traditions that we’re trying to build. It’s a really clear symbol as we’re looking to build the next 10 years of our institution: it’s saying that we are one university, and that we are one community that’s coming together across all these disciplines,” Lew said.
ASG is currently circulating a petition to garner student support for the NSC Initiative. The group’s primary goal is to have the administration build a new, centralized student center rather than use renovated space in another building.
The NSC Initiative’s secondary option is in fact a renovation of the Jacobs Center, which offers a good location but would be costly and less effective than building a new center, according to the proposal.
An estimate included in the NSC Initiative’s proposal puts the cost of a renovated Jacobs Center at about $65 million in contrast to an estimated $95 million for a completely new building.
The new Jacobs will also likely be home to relocated social science departments as well, Schapiro said. Mixing academics and student space may not create the ideal atmosphere, Lew said, citing the example of Princeton University’s Frist Campus Center, where ASG’s research indicated students feel less comfortable using the space.
“You create a confusing identity for what the building is,” she said.
A Jacobs Center renovation would likely go hand in hand with a small-scale renovation of Norris University Center at a possible cost of $2 million or so, Schapiro said, more than twice what former University President Henry Bienen put into Norris improvements in 2009.
Lew said Norris is “maxed out” and simply lacks usable space. Dividing students between Norris and Jacobs would further fragment the student body, she said.
Schapiro has indicated that he favors providing more student space on campus, but has not put his support behind ASG’s proposal. NU has alternatively invested in “third spaces,” smaller venues for students to spend time and eat other than a dorm or academic building.
Lisa’s Café on North Campus, The Great Room and the newest addition, Fran’s Café in Willard Residential College, all offer this kind of space to students. Schapiro has favored these solutions to a dearth of third spaces on campus since his arrival on campus more than a year ago.
“We can either lament the fact that Norris isn’t perfect and think about what we’re going to do in 50 years, or every year we can make an addition,” he said in an October interview with The Daily. “I prefer to do the latter.”
Smaller spaces may not build the kind of community amongst undergraduates that the NSC Initiative is seeking to foster with a new building, Lew said.
In a news release, Kellogg Dean Sally Blount said the school’s new building, to be located adjacent to the James L. Allen Center on the lakefront, “will unify our anchor campus in Evanston.”
“They wanted state-of-the art facilities,” she said. “They wanted to unite their different disciplines and give their students a sense of community and build those connections. We’re just trying to do the same exact thing,” Lew said.
