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The Rice Thresher
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by Elizabeth Jardina thresher editorial staff It's unlikely that this year's junior class at Wiess College will ever live in the college's new building. The scheduled completion date of the new Wiess building is now March 2002. The building was originally scheduled to be finished in December 2001, and students were to move from the old building to the new building between the fall and spring semesters. Now the official moving date is up in the air. Both Wiess Master John Hutchinson and Wiess President Josh Katz said a mid-semester move is possible, but not preferable. "Quite honestly, I was very much in favor of us moving ... between fall and spring semester," Hutchinson said. "But given that the building won't be completed by them, I think that the best option will be to move over the summer, to leave the building in May and return to a new building in the fall." Katz agreed. "To ask students to pick up and move midway through the semester when they have midterms and papers is unreasonable, and we're not doing that," he said. Hutchinson said the decision will be made this year in a conversation with Vice President for Student Affairs Zenaido Camacho, Vice President for Finance and Administration Dean Currie, Hutchinson, his wife Paula and Katz. Hutchinson, who is also assistant vice president for Student Affairs, said the March date isn't even certain, so discussion will be put off for the time being. "If it turns out that construction slips for six weeks, this becomes a moot question," he said. Director of Project Management and Planning Barbara White said the biggest reason for this three-month delay in the opening of New Wiess is due to problems with rerouting underground utilities. Students cited both pros and cons about the change. Wiess junior Amy Schindler pointed out that for Orientation Week 2002, both freshmen and returning students will be unfamiliar to the building if the move waits for the fall. Had they moved in for spring 2002, "the whole college could get used to the building before we had to introduce freshmen to it," she said. "Right now it'll be new to everyone." At the same time, she acknowledged that a March move, which would presumably happen during spring break, isn't an ideal solution. "It would have been a huge hassle to move in the spring," she said. Wiess junior Michael Haag said he hadn't officially heard that the move wasn't happening as planned at the beginning of the spring semester. "I'd heard rumors, but I had not heard any definite word from anybody," he said. But, he isn't bothered much by the change. "I came here, and we grew up in a building that was falling apart, and it became part of the culture here," Haag said. "It would have been nice to experience a new building, [but] I never anticipated moving in there. "It seemed unrealistic that they would move us halfway through our senior year - or that they would have it done. I mean, delays are inevitable."
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