<p>Pity poor Amherst. It has to make do with that broken down shack, The Robert Frost Library and only ONE dining hall for 1600 students. Oh, and the reason? Because all those financial aid kids are draining its billion and a half dollar endowment. Pardon me, while I wipe a tear:
<a href=“Amherst College Makes Sacrifices To Enroll Low-Income Students | WBUR News”>http://www.wbur.org/2014/05/20/amherst-low-income-students</a></p>
<p>In my opinion, you’re putting the wrong spin on that story. Amherst has no obligation to the citizens of Alaska or Kentucky. It has decided that enrolling low-income students from all over the country has more educational value for all its students than a new library or dining hall would have. That’s commendable. Too bad our federal government and the states don’t consistently set similar priorities. If they did, public universities in Alaska and Kentucky wouldn’t be undersold by a tiny private college in a distant state. </p>
<p>Stop hating.</p>
<p>Did you get rejected and now have to bash every commendable practice of Amherst’s? </p>
<p>I have to say that when we toured Amherst when my son was looking at colleges, the campus stood out as one of the less well-maintained ones we looked at. My son was recruited for track and cross country, and we were kind of shocked that in the winter, the athletes run on a rubber mat placed in a circle around a volleyball court in an old building! What the heck? And we weren’t impressed with the dining facilities, either. By the way, my son was accepted to Amherst, so it’s not sour grapes on my part.</p>
<p>@AmericanHopee
That’s pretty laughable considering how often Amherst posters are caught bashing other colleges:
<a href=“Amherst or Reed? - Amherst College - College Confidential Forums”>Amherst or Reed? - Amherst College - College Confidential Forums;
<p>I agree with tk21769. Remember too that Biddy Martin came most recently from UW-Madison, which is always under construction with new facilities, dorms, etc. (and yet still has many buildings that are falling apart). A LOT of older colleges have very old buildings that have seen a lot of wear and tear over decades or even centuries. If the institutional priority is to emphasize the diversity of the student body over sparkly new facilities, people who value the latter more should probably choose a different school.</p>
<p>@circuitrider:</p>
<p>I’m not sure I can follow your logic.
So because some dumb student on CC behaved disrespectfully this now causes the need for you to try to make Amherst look bad?
And actually you are doing so while at the same time criticizing Amherst for being generous with financial aid.
I think you are being unfair and you know that. Get over your grudge and enjoy life 
</p>
<p>Edit: no one was disrespectful in your link/the linked thread. I think you totally misjudged the posters who offered some valuable insight. In fact, your post was the first one that employed a more aggressive language. </p>
<p>@sally305
</p>
<p>Apparently, it’s true that sarcasm doesn’t translate well on the internet. With that in mind, allow me to walk back my statement: The Robert Frost Library is FAR from a broken down shack. It is a classic example of Mid-Century Modern architecture that was dedicated by John F. Kennedy in one of his last official acts as president. Only an institution with an hyper-inflated sense of grandeur would even think it was in need of replacement.</p>
<p>No dog in this fight, but when I see the phrase “classic Mid-Century Modern”, I have to look at the picture. Sorry, but my immediate gut reaction over the building itself is “meh”. Functional, maybe, but “classic”, no. Maybe I grew up with this stuff too much in my childhood to appreciate it, but an awful lot of the current Mid-Century Modern craze is over true crap. The Frost Library isn’t bad, but I can see it being an eyesore in the middle of a classic campus as well. It’s just probably misplaced. Don’t know that it needs to be replaced, but a lot of LAC libraries seem to be this way, misplaced.</p>
<p>@MrMom62
Blame it on Mad Men.</p>
<p>Nah, that’s too easy. It’s more like everything old is new again. Happens to every thing and every one, at different rates, but it does happen eventually. Then everyone gets tired of it and moves on to the next new old thing.</p>
<p>I’m just impressed that the library has a cafe in it.</p>
<p>We visited last month and DS was accepted to A and will attend, I thought the Library was excellent, from the outside perhaps Meh, but inside and for what you use a library for, quite excellent and the access to millions of volumes at it and the 5 college cons is excellent. Now it’s NOT Vassar, have you seen Vassar’s Library!, DS was accepted there to, but chose A over Vassar, nor compared to Olin at Wes, I think @circuitrider will attest that Olin from the outside is pretty, but from the inside its kind of rank and rather more in need to refurb than the Frost @ A.</p>
<p>We chose A for its diversity, academics and fin aid, have you seen the new Pratt field?, I have seen English Premier League Football/Soccer facilities with lesser facilities. We liked Wes but LOVED Amherst each to their own.</p>
<p>@Englishman
</p>
<p>Sure. I’d also add that Olin Library is about 35 years older than Frost @ Amherst and the thought of replacing it with another structure the same exact square footage just because it doesn’t fit a particular architectural fad would strike most of us as a little daffy. </p>
<p>The real mid-century modern analogues to Frost @ Wesleyan would be the Foss Hill dormitories (1956-62). As seen in the photos below, they too, could certainly use some TLC on the interior. But, I don’t agree with bulldozing two city blocks worth of dormitories only to rebuild them again, the way they’re planning to do @ Amherst: <a href=“http://condor.wesleyan.edu/html/cvanderpoel/public_html/images/foss.htm”>http://condor.wesleyan.edu/html/cvanderpoel/public_html/images/foss.htm</a> </p>
<p>Without getting into the politics of preserving any particular building, it’s often more efficient across the board to raze a building than it is to refurb it. Architectural significance is often the only reason to keep it - if you need to update an old building, even one from the 1950s, to modern HVAC, energy efficiency, lighting, accessibility, power, etc. requirements, it’s far, far cheaper to start from scratch than to rehab.</p>
<p>I know of two LAC projects that managed to preserve much of the external architecture of the old building by just keeping the facades, but the insides were completely removed - the dorms at Bowdoin and the science center at Hamilton. The interiors were completely inappropriate for modern buildings, but the buildings themselves were an integral part of campus, so they did the facade preservation. If the buildings themselves are regarded as eyesores with no champions, and they are no longer functional, then completely removing them is actually the cost efficient way to go.</p>
<p>@MrMom62
</p>
<p>Well, that’s the point: Amherst has not telegraphed in any way shape or form, what the problem is with Frost, other than it is an ugly building. Btw, I think the carbon footprint resulting from a renovation would have to be far less than a demolition involving the hauling away of an entire building over many miles and the importation of an equivalent mass over the same distance, in each case, using fossil fuels to do so.</p>
<p>I think you’d be wrong about that. The carbon footprint of heating and cooling an energy inefficient building every day for the next 50 years vs. an energy efficient building would be far greater than hauling away the old building and hauling in the new building one time.</p>
<p>The one hidden thing here about buildings from the 1950s to the 1970s is asbestos, which most buildings of that era used. Sometimes the best thing you can do is leave it alone, but that also makes rehab impossible. And if you do rehab, you absolutely have to make sure you don’t have a contaminated rehabbed building vs. just hauling the whole thing away.</p>
<p>I can actually see a library being the one place on campus most affected by the changes of the information revolution. Any old library is not going to have the power or information infrastructure that a modern library needs or will need in the next 100 years, and if there’s nothing worth saving in the shell, might as well start from scratch. Maybe they could repurpose the shell, but given all the above problems, it may not be worth it. Every old building is not worth saving, even if it isn’t “old”.</p>
<p>@MrMom
</p>
<p>Trying to anticipate what a library will be like, much less the kind of information “infrastructure” it will need 100 years from now is a fool’s errand. Think about all those dorm rooms wired for BASIC. Oh, wait. I guess that didn’t really materialize, did it? In the end, unless Amherst chooses to burn all of them or put them into storage, it’s still basically going to be a place to shelve books. </p>
<p>@MrMom
</p>
<p>I think you’d be right about that. Unfortunately, it doesn’t address what I said</p>
<p>I would imagine they are thinking of something like this:
<a href=“The Library Of The Future Will Probably Look Something Like This”>http://www.teachthought.com/technology/the-library-of-the-future-will-probably-look-something-like-this/</a></p>
<p>So yes, they are thinking of putting them all in storage with an automatic retrieval system. No more wondering the stacks, just looking for something interesting…</p>