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The Rice Thresher
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The Jones Construction Compensation Committee is asking for college residents' room fees to be reduced by half because it is difficult to live in a construction site. If they get what they're requesting, students from Jones College would pay at least $2,000 less than other students for on-campus housing. As much as we sympathize with their situation, we cannot support the idea of differential pricing at different colleges. What if financially strapped students decided to transfer en masse to Jones for on-campus living at bargain prices? The idea is slightly farfetched, but not entirely unreasonable. Two thousand dollars is a substantial chunk out of almost anyone's budget. The composition of the colleges is intended to be random - that's part of the value of the college system. Having an incentive for students with economic hardships to live in one place is antithetical to this ideal. Now is an especially ripe time to address the issue of differential pricing for another reason. When Martel College opens next spring, its facilities will be dramatically better than those at older colleges like Brown and Sid Richardson - which are, in turn, substantially better than facilities like those at the oldest buildings like Will Rice and Hanszen. Should living at Martel, where students will have the option of living in a suite of single rooms, cost more than living at Hanszen, where there are four singles for the whole college? Then again, should students at Will Rice have been paying less for on-campus housing all along because Jones has a kitchen on every floor, and Will Rice has only one? All students should pay the same amount, even though each college has specific advantages and disadvantages. The Jones Construction Compensation Committee argues that in a similar situation, students in a dorm under construction at Columbia University had their room fees reduced. Despite the fact that Columbia is one of the schools Rice administrators like to compare us to, Columbia doesn't have a college system, so students pay different amounts to live in different dorms anyway. It's not important to make room rates consistent at Columbia in the same way it's important at Rice. Jones has a legitimate complaint about construction - but individual checks to students cannot be the solution.
Construction's other costs Although construction on campus will be beneficial, it comes at a price. Construction is good for the future. When Martel College opens, 80 percent of undergraduate students will be able to live on campus. The new building for the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management will give the business school a facility equal to Rice's ambition for it. The new Humanities Building gave beautiful offices to many faculty members whose offices had previously been tucked in any space that could be found, and the building provided desperately needed classrooms. However, the quality of life for many students, particularly those at Jones College, has declined because of the mess created by the construction. What used to be an isle of green on the north side of campus has been transformed into a wasteland of gravel, machinery and half-finished shells of buildings. In many ways, Jones is more a work site than a place for people to live. Construction around Jones has not proceeded carefully enough to preserve quality of life for the students who make it their home. The inconvenience of constant noise and the reduction in commons space and outdoor space, the two major complaints from Jones residents, are valid. However, students from Jones are not the only ones to suffer inconveniences from construction. For example, new Wiess College is being built directly behind Hanszen College - giving Hanszen students a fair number of noise-related headaches as well. This is not to say that we believe Jones residents should just grin and bear the noise and inconvenience. We think the university has an obligation to make their lives better in ways other than individual student compensation. The university should give Jones more ambiance money to make physical improvements to the building that could help alleviate the ugliness and make the college a more pleasant place to live. Jones students should brainstorm ways the university could help them out. In addition, we believe that students at Hanszen should receive similar compensation in ambiance money. Both Jones and Hanszen have lost sand volleyball courts (reducing the number on campus to the one at Lovett) and Hanszen has also lost its barbecue pit and its deck. Jones' sun deck, affectionately called "the Isle," was destroyed to make room for Martel even though it cost the college a substantial amount of ambiance money. College budgets are taken seriously, and if the physical improvements a college has made must be destroyed because they are in the way of construction, the college must be compensated. Anything less is disrespectful. The Jones students' most serious complaint is that noise from construction interferes with students' ability to sleep, study and exist peacefully in their rooms. Peace and quiet is not too much to ask. We agree that work should not continue late into the evening, even though the days will begin to lengthen as summer draws near. Also, it should not begin early in the morning when students are trying to grab a few precious hours of sleep before the relentless grind of problem sets, essays and exams resumes. We realize that amendments to the construction schedule may interfere with Martel's completion date, but we should not sacrifice the sanity of students at Jones so the ones at Martel can move in a semester earlier.
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