by Hannah Sievert |
Haley Meisberger has grown accustomed to swiping her I.D., hearing the lock click and walking through the double doors of Shipstad Hall to have the front desk attendant greet her. The community inside the brick building tucked between the sand volleyball court and UP’s main entrance has become her home away from home this year, she hopes it will stay that way.
Although Meisberger was always planning to stay in Shipstad, she said she's skeptical about whether or not the new dorm will be finished in time for next year, a concern that many other students planning to return to on-campus life share.
“The new dorm is really just a hole in the ground right now. It’s hard to believe it’s going to be done,” Meisberger said.
Chris Haug, director of Residence Life, assures that the new dorm is on track to be completed on Aug. 19, 2016, just in time for classes to begin on Aug. 29. According to Sarah Meiser, associate director of Residence Life, it will house approximately 226 students, bringing some relief to the housing shortage that has plagued the university’s growing student population in recent years.
However, the new dorm will continue to utilize “extended living” rooms — traditionally double rooms accommodating three people.
“If we extend the rooms to how much they can be extended, we can get up to 288 beds into the new dorm,” Meiser said.
Both students applying for the new dorm, and students living in other residence halls, can opt into living in extended living situations when applying for housing for next year. Residence Life will offer a $750 per semester refund from the housing fees for students in extended rooms.
“If returning students want to, it’s a great way to live with an extra friend and save a lot of money,” Meiser said.
The new dorm will be co-ed with three women's wings and two male wings. There will be a hall director, an assistant hall director, a pastoral resident and five new resident assistants. Additionally, the new dorm will include a chapel, a lounge, and a kitchen off of the lounge.
It will also feature six suites, each consisting of three double rooms attached to their own private living room space. The suites will be up for grabs first at upperclassmen selection night, along with Haggerty and Tyson apartments and University-owned houses. The remaining suites will be available at the new hall room selection on Feb. 23.
“The new hall is an equal opportunity building for everyone this year,” Meiser said. “There is no current population, none of the hall system that we have that place. People from all over campus who want the new hall are equally suited to move into it.”
But despite this clean slate, Residence Life staff are carefully considering how to craft an individual identity for the new dorm.
“Individual hall community is incredibly important. We see this hall as being able to celebrate its own personality as part of our family of residence halls,” Haug said.
This identity will rely heavily on the presence of upperclassmen. Approximately 60 percent of the new hall will be reserved for returning students. The remaining 40 percent will be saved for incoming freshmen.
Meiser said that the other traditional residence halls on The Bluff have a more equal split between first-year students and returning students. Residence Life hopes the higher rate of upperclassmen in the new dorm will help establish a strong sense of identity.
“We might do some planning over the summer with the returning students over social media, so that when we open the hall, there’s a bit of an identity already started,” Haug said. “When freshmen move into the hall, we want them to feel like there’s some identity already established.”
Although the exact identity of the new hall isn’t known yet, Haug looks forward to the development of a new community on campus.
“It’s like we’re adding another family member to our community,” Haug said. “We don’t know what they’re going to look like, how they’re going to act, but what we know is they’re going to be a Pilot at the core. It’s just going to give our whole community a whole new level of depth.”
Hannah Sievert is a reporter for The Beacon. She can be reached at sievert19@up.edu.
