Wall vs Monroe/Sharp

Colleges and Universities A-Z Tulane University
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<p>Frankly, I think your comments are a bit over the top. Way off base with the president comment. I said I am sure he remembers HIS dorm days, and he may remember them fondly. I lived in Monroe for four years, and I thought it was just fine. Even so, to say “why doesn’t he do anything about them” ignores the fact that Tulane has built several new dorms in the past decade or so, and two just in the last 4 years. There is a 15 year plan to keep updating the dorms. If you want to donate a billion dollars, I am sure it can get done faster. But to imply that you or I or President Cowen would have the same view of staying in a dorm as 18 year old kids is completely absurd, IMO. So what good that would do escapes me.</p>

<p>It is a fairly recent phenomenon that dorms have gotten nicer, and few schools can afford to replace them all nearly overnight. Not only is that absurdly expensive, but where do you house students while you replace a dorm like Monroe? Tulane is doing way more than most schools in building new dorms that are nicer than the old ones. Also there are many schools of top reputations where the dorms are not that great. In any case, I don’t know why you seem to think the freshmen dorms at Tulane are all that bad. Most of the students seem to think they are just fine. If which school you want your child to go to depends on having luxury dorms, I am sure you can find a good fit based on that criterion alone. Frankly I think that represents highly skewed priorities. I was stating a fact that schools can improve their position with students by having nicer dorms and better food. That doesn’t mean you throw any other investment out to focus on that alone. Dorm infrastructure isn’t something that gets changed quickly, easily or inexpensively. BTW, while Middlebury had great food, the dorm rooms I saw were nothing to write home about. Much smaller than anything Tulane has.</p>

<p>As far as the money that goes to the stadium or similar areas, those are donations specifically targeted for that purpose. Could those donors have been convinced to contribute similar amounts for dorms or other non-athletic purposes? That is very hard to say. Many wealthy donors feel very strongly about where their contributions go. Also, I don’t think Yulman is going to have an abundance of “super boxes” for the “already super rich”.</p>

<p>Bruff could be better, but again that would cost more. WUSTL, for example, estimates their room and board at almost $2,000 more than Tulane. Also, as I have mentioned several times, Tulane is going to replace Bruff, with a scheduled start in 2015. That facility will not only be much nicer, but preliminary plans are that it will also include dorm rooms in the upper levels of the structure. I realize that won’t be of much help to most of the students just entering Tulane, but again one cannot change everything at once. Even so, Bruff is hardly a “slop counter”. It is so far higher in quality than when I was there I cannot begin to describe the difference. I would definitely be wary of “net research”. Sites like College P*rowler attract the complainers. It is hardly scientific.</p>

<p>So I think your rant is a little misplaced. There is in fact a lot of investment already, more on the way, and the current facilities are nowhere near as bleak as you make them sound. I am not saying I consider Monroe and Sharp architectural masterpieces, they clearly are not. But they are perfectly adequate dorms for now. Would I like to see them replaced with dorms more like the ones that have been built recently? Of course, if that can be done and still provide enough rooms for everyone. My guess is that these suite style buildings don’t have as many beds per square foot, but I don’t know that for sure. Maybe they do.</p>

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<p>Tulane also faces the problem of being in a residential neighborhood so they don’t have a lot of unused space to build new dorms. It will be a process to phase out old dorms as newer ones are built. My son spent a week at Shippensburg last summer and while their dorms were amazing- suite style with a shared LR and separate bedrooms and bathrooms, and the cafeteria was superb- the campus is in the middle of no where and the smell of cow manure permeates the campus. He also spent a week on the Tulane campus and didn’t have anything negative to say about the dorms. He didn’t care for Bruff but being in NOLA he had a high expectation of what he was going to eat and cafeteria food is not going to live up to his previous experiences at restaurants. There are so many alternate places to eat on and near campus, I can’t see the dining hall being a deciding factor in choosing to go to Tulane or not. Sharp and Monroe sound like typical dorms that exist on any campus. Based on so many of the student posts on here - students don’t have any complaints and they remain a popular choice!</p>

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<p>More important perhaps than the quality of the Bruff experience has been the small scale protests on behalf of the workers who are paid very low wages. Somewhere on my computer is a video of my daughter and others singing “We shall Overcome” in Scott Cowen’s office.</p>

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<p>Students are living in the dorms, not their parents! While my S wanted to see the dorms at all of the schools we visited, they did not factor into his decision of where to apply. Everyone has different priorities.</p>

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<p>My D is a freshman this year and lives in Sharp. She is very social and wanted to make sure she didn’t miss out on anything. I tried to convince her to live in Butler or Wall and she wasn’t interested. I of course wasn’t worried about her social life, but about her grades. She loves Sharp, but now says she should have applied to Wall. She just didn’t want to write another essay since she had written so many for schools and scholarships. In terms of her grades though, my D works hard and plays hard and knows when is the right time for each and had great results for her first semester and she is pre-med. </p>

<p>The food at Bruff is another story though…She is completely unhappy about the food quality. She complains that everything is cooked in oil and butter! Even grilled chicken and vegetables. And when she asks then to use less oil they give her dirty looks. I told her to go to student government and try to start an initiative for a healthy food section in Bruff. If they got a ban on smoking on campus, this should be pretty easy and I’m sure get a lot of support???</p>

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<p>middlechld - Congrats on your D’s excellent start.</p>

<p>I thought Bruff had a section for salad and other healthier options, but clearly your D and others think it isn’t enough. Of all the things I hear about Bruff, this is the one I hear most often. I agree she should work with like minded students (maybe Paterson would be fertile ground to find them?) and try to get more done along those lines. It would certainly seem that offering more choices of that nature wouldn’t be that hard, but without knowing details from both sides it is hard to say.</p>

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<p>You would have to know what the contract is between Tulane and is it Sodexo. And when it is up. Students could work with administration to bring in a different organization to run Bruff…</p>

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<p>That’s true, although I would think Tulane can still dictate to some extent what gets served. Even if that is not spelled out in the contract, Sodexo certainly has incentive to try and meet Tulane’s demands if they want to renew the contract, whenever that is due. Possibly complicating the situation is that Loyola right next door uses the same service, although apparently the selections vary. Tulane and Loyola students can eat at each others facilities fairly freely. I don’t know if Loyola offers more health oriented options. I also don’t know how important keeping the same service provider is to Tulane.</p>

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<p>fc, keeping the same contract is as important as the admins make it. my rant about dorms and food is as much a rant about admins who do little to improve the education of the students. to that extent, it is not focused on your alma mater. I didn’t know that food services at TU were run by sodexho, but I do know that many college food services are and they are expensive and often of poor quality. neither is this an attack on sodexho. parents, students, and faculty might ask of their administrators whose benefit does it serve to year after year have the same lousy food services. surely it is not the students who are served by such policy. so, too, students, faculty, and parents need to ask whom it serves if dorms and their furnishings are poorly cleaned and maintained or allowed to fall into disrepair. if the problem is a shortage of money, who is responsible for that and where are they spending the money if not on the students’ lives? again, this isn’t about tulane or its president, but when you say that admins cannot dictate where donors can spend their money you are asking us to buy into a line of bull hockey that just won’t hold up. when administrators at the top make it clear that the lives and educations of the students are their top priority, then donors will fall into line. so, too, with campus vendors. students can tell when administrators, faculty, and colleges don’t put their educations and interests first. we all can do better, but when that message doesn’t come down from the top it’s easy for students to see and feel that.</p>

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<p>Then you should post these thoughts on the more general forums. This is a Tulane forum and so it appears you are specifically talking about Tulane. Personally, I feel that very little of your complaints apply to Tulane.</p>

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<p>It is very true that large donors can designate where their money goes. Often times they want naming rights to something. Former athletes are famous for earmarking money for improvements or scholarships to athletic programs. We had a family donate a large sum of money for a garden. Yes, a garden. The President and Board also set priorities where donations are encouraged. And there are often more pressing needs than dorm cleaning. especially when the school is focused on building new dorms they are not going to invest millions into the old dorms that may be replaced on the master plan.</p>

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<p>I of course agree with the first half of your post, dolphnlvr6, but I must take issue with the second half:</p>

<p>“more pressing needs than dorm cleaning”–really? are you not paying for the dorms to be clean? or are you paying for some building project that won’t come online for a year or ten after your child leaves the school? I know I’ve taken your comments a bit out of context, dolphnlvr6, but really? why must one be sacrificed to the other?</p>

<p>I don’t think these questions are irrelevant to this forum when I hear that Tulane’s dorms are less clean than my house (at least, the space outside my child’s bedroom). But once again I am not intent upon criticizing Tulane but upon waking up parents to the ways their money is being spent and in some cases misspent–at a great many colleges.</p>

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<p>IMHO, A) students are largely responsible for the messes made and need to take more responsibility for keeping things clean, and B) if this is the biggest problem Tulane has, then I think the school is in excellent shape.</p>

<p>The dorms with common baths are cleaned daily. Dorms with suite bathrooms are the responsibility of the students to clean, and they know this going in. I have no idea how clean your house is, but assuming it is kept nicely then I imagine every college dorm in the country measures up to “less clean than my house (at least, the space outside my child’s bedroom)”.</p>

<p>Just my two cents, but unless you can prove to me that the students at Tulane are living in filth or other highly unsanitary conditions (and having been there numerous times I know this is not remotely true), I find this part of the discussion highly uninteresting.</p>

<p>If you want to have a big discussion about how colleges set priorities and spend their money, then I once again suggest you find the appropriate general forum and start a thread there. It is an interesting subject that i am sure will draw a lot of comments. If you have issues about how Tulane sets its priorities and spends its money, then by all means let’s talk about it. I don’t think you will get much more interest on how much they invest in cleaning services, though. But I could be wrong.</p>

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<p>

That strikes me as highly bizarre. If that had been said starting from 1843 (when Tulane was founded) then where would things be? Or not to be quite so dramatic, does it not occur to you that a student entering today is benefiting from investments made 10 years ago? Clearly universities have a mandate to have up-to-date research facilities, learning programs that speak to today’s highly internationalized world, and excellent faculties, as well as livable dorms and edible food</p>

<p>Your statement fails on so many levels it is actually hard to address. Besides, the dorms are cleaned daily, as I mentioned earlier. If the students cannot show some responsibility for their own living conditions, then there is little more the university can do.</p>