…and not the condiment, either.

Yesterday, I took an excursion over to the newly renovated Mayo-Smith.  It’s a beautiful dorm – a clean, well-lighted place, elegant yet comfortable.  Mayo-Smith has a long and storied history.  Built in 1923 as the Chi Psi fraternity lodge, the place has seen a lot throughout the years and was clearly due for a tune-up.

But I’m not happy with it.  And neither should you be.  You’re guessing right – I’m upset over the fact that the dorm no longer contains a ballroom.  I’m more upset over the lack of consultation with the student body.

Let’s go over the facts:

FACT: Mayo-Smith used to have a large ballroom.  It was used frequently for parties, dances, concerts, events, speeches, and meetings.

FACT: Mayo-Smith no longer has a place where a large contingent of students can congregate.

FACT: Students were upset when the renovation was alerted to campus via the investigative work of Student staff writer J. Robinson Mead.

FACT: The Student article came out only after the project had begun, rendering any type of protest useless.

Now, let’s be reasonable.  There are a bunch of large spaces for students to congregate on campus.  And they’re not changing the layout of either Hitchcock or Seelye.  But Mayo’s space was one of the best and we no longer have it.

Whether you have ever been to Mayo for any type of event, I am positive that we can all agree that there are many legitimate reasons why students should have places to congregate in large numbers.

So what did we get in return?  I’ll tell you what – 3 single rooms.  3 people.  For a campus with 1,500 people living on campus, that’s simply not worth it.

I want to briefly address a serious issue – the dilemma of the benefits of renovating a building to be handicapped accessible versus the costs of doing so.  These costs include the direct monetary costs of building and maintaining facilities such as elevators and the sentimental cost of changing a building’s original structure.  I tend to come out on the side of those in support of making buildings handicapped accessible – I think it’s the right thing to do, plus there’s a little thing called the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

But let’s be clear here.  Regardless of whether the Residential Master Plan boasts that

the renovation reconfigured the first floor area to accommodate three rooms that are fully accessible to persons with disabilities

Mayo-Smith is not – and I repeat, not – handicapped accessible.  There’s no elevator.  You have to take the stairs to get almost anywhere.  Putting three rooms on the first floor doesn’t redeem an entire building, even if one does have an internal bathroom – a critical feature that they thankfully included.

So I don’t accept the argument that the removal of the ballroom can be justified on grounds of making the building accessible to persons with disabilities.

Now, college staffers and the contractors they hire are bound to have bad ideas now and then – ideas that are not in the best interest of students.  That’s why we have a Senate that is supposed to have oversight over things like this.  Actually, we even have a committee dedicated to Residential Life – thanks, Rania Arja ’06 (time to update the website, guys).

I’m not trying to criticize the AAS (or even the AAS of 2, 3, and 4 years ago).  But I think they may have missed out on an opportunity to speak up.

What’s done is done.  So why I am writing about this, anyway?

Because sometime in the coming years, the Residential Master Plan calls for the demolition of the social dorms to be replaced with something called “East Campus.”  About 325 students live in the social dorms (excluding Jenkins and Taplin), so that’s a big deal.

And even though I liked Stone so much last year that I decided to come back this year, I’d be the first to acknowledge that the social dorms are a mess.  They should be torn down and replaced.  East Campus must have dorms that are environmentally friendly, handicapped accessible, aesthetically pleasing, and structurally sound – none of which could be said about the current Socials.

And yes, we’re going to need dorms that have ample common space.  We need big, open, multipurpose areas.  As students, we have to make sure that East Campus will be designed and constructed with our best interests in mind.  So talk to your friends on AAS and let them know you care.  Otherwise, we’ll once again just be stuck with whatever gets thrown our way.