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The Rice Thresher
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Construction-related problems disturb college environment, students say by Mark Berenson Thresher Editorial Staff
The committee was formed to look into ways the university can compensate the college for inconveniences due to construction. Vice President for Finance and Administration Dean Currie said Rice is unlikely to reduce fees in such a manner. The Jones Construction Compensation Committee - senior Brian O'Malley, President-elect Steve Wilbur and junior Michelle Lopez - has held several college meetings to discuss plans for compensation. Wilbur, a junior, said the committee believes Jones should be compensated because the construction has damaged the college's atmosphere and because promises administrators made regarding construction practices have been broken. "The original agreement was construction would occur Monday through Friday, from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.," Wilbur said. "Right now we are at the stage where it is seven days a week, 6:30 a.m. to at least 6 p.m. - sometimes it has gone on until 10." Wilbur said construction has led to sleep deprivation for some students. Director of Food and Housing Mark Ditman said construction is occurring more hours per day to keep the new wing of Jones on track for its scheduled completion in December. Half of the Jones Commons has been demolished to make room for the new wing, and the college has lost almost all of its green space. In addition, the college has only one-fourth of the close-in parking spaces it used to, Wilbur said, which has decreased the presence of off-campus students at Jones. "Since it is harder for off-campus people to come and visit Jones, it affects the social dynamic for us," Wilbur said. Wilbur said the idea to reduce room fees came from Jones senior Vivek Mittal. Mittal visited Columbia University's medical school earlier this year and stayed in a dorm that was under construction. Mittal learned that students living in the dorm had requested a rebate on their room fees and had received a 25 percent discount. Columbia's housing fees vary based on the quality and type of room. At Rice, the room rates are the same across colleges. After gathering student opinion from the college about possible ways Jones could be compensated, the committee met with Currie and Vice President for Student Affairs Zenaido Camacho. Wilbur said Currie and Camacho agreed that Jones had suffered from the construction. "I have lots of sympathy, especially for the [Jones] North students, where construction is almost 360 degrees around them," Currie said. However, Currie said he would have to look at the university's accounting to determine if such a rebate is possible. Currie said a rebate, which would total about $400,000 per year, could either come from within F&H, or from other budgets. Ditman said F&H breaks even right now, and if Jones were to be reimbursed there would need to be a cut in service somewhere else. "It's a zero sum game," Ditman said. "The only way to fund it from Food and Housing is either to increase rates for other students or to drop the level of service. The money would be shifted from student to student." The operating budget for housing is about $7 million per year. Currie added that there are already housing disparities between colleges. "We must ask ourselves, 'Has Jones suffered more than Wiess has from living in substandard housing?'" he said. Ditman said the university has always shied away from making room rates different because the college system is based on the colleges being different yet equal. Differential pricing could lead to poor students living in one college and wealthy students in the colleges with the nicest rooms. "One of the premises that Rice operates under is not having elite colleges, and the reason that people are randomly assigned to colleges is that you don't want to have a rich college and an impoverished one," Ditman said. "Differential pricing would certainly contribute to that because people could try and change colleges based on price, and that would be contrary to what the university is trying to accomplish with colleges." The Construction Compensation Committee also has additional requests of the administration. They want the hours of construction be limited to a "reasonable" schedule, and they want access to the meetings the university holds with the Houston community to receive input on the construction. Ditman said F&H is attempting to make living conditions better at Jones. F&H recently built a rock garden and put up swings and hammocks outside of Jones. Jones junior Lillian McCurdy said that although the rock garden is nice, it does not replace what the college has lost. "It's nice to have a place to hang out, but it doesn't compare to what we used to have," McCurdy said. On Monday night F&H hosted a pizza party for Jones. Currie said the pizza party was unrelated to the request for compensation, and was F&H's way of thanking the college for putting up with the construction. Ditman said another way Jones could be compensated for the construction is by having more flexibility with its ambiance money. Ambiance money is given to the colleges each year to make physical improvements. O'Malley said more ambiance money would not be an effective solution for the Jones seniors, because they would not benefit from it. "The administration can try, and I would love to see what they can do because potentially creative things can be done, but my guess is that this would simply be a way to tokenize the suffering that we have had to put up with," O'Malley said. Wilbur said he hopes an agreement can be reached in time for the Jones room draw, which occurs around the end of March. Camacho could not be reached for comment.
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