We have had an awful year in regards to thousands of students (HS/ College) showing signs of depression. The counselors and psychologists, that I know, have shown increases of patients in this age category. Students need access to natural light, outdoor views, and open air.
Now, we want to house them in shoe box contraptions with no source of outdoor air, nor light. Coupled with unsafe earthquake and fire emergency outlets. How will emergency services get to all of these kids??? THESE apartments can and will flood! What then? Deal with the mold?
PLUS: ODORS! SMELLS, ODORS, travel throughout non-ventilated areas.
Has anyone even discussed the smells that will be trapped and emanate from all of these bodies pressed together?
Billionaire Munger: Keep your $1 bet to yourself. Go back to college and get a degree in architecture! We, on this site, will help you to find an appropriate school.
Better yet: DONATE THAT MONEY without hooks or conditions! It will make you out as a better person.
The Q&A interlaces real questions and softballs meant to balance the article toward the positive, as the university logically would, I suppose.
It does answer the question of access: 15, not 2, entrances.
It doesn’t answer the question of ventilation though (it does speak of it and while the fact there won’tbe any recirculated air is indeed excellent in post covid times, I don’t understand what they’re going to do); in addition, the article makes it sound like “many” bedrooms will have windows when in fact only 6% will.
They say students will have a choice, but will it be between on campus rooms with windows or the windowless suites?
And in the comparison with Michigan’s building, the fact we’re talking undergrads, not grad students - in a very different position wrt on campus accommodation- isn’t addressed.
Isn’t the ventilation the same issue that any large office building/skyscraper has? I estimate I’ve spent between 5-10 years working in interior offices where I had no windows or natural light unless I went out of the building. But I haven’t lived in a place without windows. So I don’t know how the reverse (no windows in living area/windows elsewhere) translates.
A cubicle or an office is different from a dorm bedroom though, in the way it’s occupied and used. However I don’t know how it applies to ventilation.
Did I understand right that there’d be one big set of rooms with windows for 64 students? or is it one big common room with windows for 8 students?
I have had a windowless office and I always kept my door open and had a big poster of an open window. It was still super hard to figure what time it was (and I know they will have “circadian lights” but it seems a bit risky to bet everything on them) and claustrophobic.
Each 8-person suite has a 13’*38’ common study area and a 13’*10’ kitchen, as well as eight 7’*10’ single bedrooms and two 7’*10’ bathrooms. Most have no windows.
Each “house” of eight suites (64 residents) has a 29’*74’ “great room” with windows, plus a kitchen, game room, laundry room, and two additional bathrooms. The “great room” also has access to two stairwells, in addition to the stairwells and elevators in the central hallway on the opposite side of the “house”.
Actually, I have seen college dorms that have a higher density of residents to floor space, with fewer and worse other amenities (e.g. a hall of doubles and triples each about twice the size of the proposed Munger Hall singles, with a common bathroom and a small lounge area about twice the size of a regular room). But they were long narrow buildings with windows in every room.
4600+ plus students, parking for 3000 bikes, many classrooms about a mile a way. Only two bike paths. The path serving the lot with 2000+ bikes restrained in spots to only 8 ft. That’s 4 feet wide in each direction with no setoff in between lanes. For 2000+ bikes. Getting in and out of Dodger Stadium might be easier.
From the article above
" the university seemed to acknowledge the mental health toll that having no windows imposed because they converted part of the game room in the basement to a “do-it-yourself” therapy room with massage chairs, sunlamps and coloring pages."
"In general, it was hard for me to get out of bed in the morning, at least having some sunlight definitely helped with that,” Ghaffari said. “I don’t think I ever got used to not having a window. Early morning classes were really challenging. It was pitch dark when I woke up and I’d have to check my phone just to see what time of day it was.”
And we’re talking grad students who had a choice + a proven record of academic success. Can you imagine the impact on freshmen?
Then, the scale: 650 people v. 6,500…
On the other hand, some of the problems with lack of sunlight seem to be the result of Ann Arbor’s poor weather and lack of sunny days (“Ann Arbor is already one of the cloudiest cities, so you add that on top of a winter where you maybe get less than a few hours of sunlight, and it’s going to be overcast”), exacerbated by Covid (“his first two years were fairly positive, but when the coronavirus pandemic struck and his friends started to move out, his experience began to change”). In contrast, the roofftop terrace at UCSB is likely to be usable almost every day of the year and there’s plenty of sunshine as soon as you step outside. We just had an outdoor Thanksgiving in Paso Robles, with beautiful blue skies and a temperature of 73 degrees.
In addition, it seems the alternatives in Michigan are nothing like the typical UC non-air conditioned, tiny triple dorm room that you can’t spend much time in anyway. I LOL’ed at criticism of the Michigan building saying "It didn’t feel like home; it felt like a hotel…I wanted a more private and homey environment” when I think about S’s dorm room. That felt like a sweaty closet filled with beds.
