Where will Yale house its students now?

"Can everyone hear me?" asks a tour guide as she pauses and turns to face a group of 20 high school juniors and their parents. "We are now on Old Campus, and this is Nathan Hale, Yale class of 1773." The guide pauses for emphasis and smiles as a few parents snap pictures of the statue. "During his time at Yale, Hale lived here, in Connecticut Hall, which is the oldest building on Old Campus—and, in fact, the oldest building at Yale." The parents nod in silent appreciation and the group moves on, toward Dwight Hall. "Old Campus is at the heart of Yale life for freshmen," explains the tour guide as she walks backward to face her audience. "Freshmen from 10 of Yale's 12 residential colleges live here. And although they live in dorms with other first-year students from their college, the close-knit community on Old Campus encourages freshmen from all colleges to get to know each other."

Thousands of prospective students touring Yale each year hear a speech just like this one. Thousands more read Yale's viewbook, which describes how the residential colleges provide a structure that makes Yale unique among major research universities. "By offering a community of students and faculty as well as extracurricular and academic opportunities," the guide says, "the colleges create the intimacy of a small school without diminishing the benefits of the surrounding University." Always a core element of the Yale experience, the residential college system has become one of the University's strongest selling points—so much so that other schools, from Dartmouth to the University of Wisconsin, are striving to emulate it. Yet as Yale struggles through a decade of renovations, a host of problems—from overcrowded rooms to annexed and isolated students—threaten the core of the system, creating a generation of Yalies without any particular connection to their college, or to the community it is supposed to foster.

Looming challenges

Yale is likely to face its worst housing challenge yet within the next two years, when an ambitious Old Campus project will displace hundreds of students and seriously challenge the cohesion of the University's residential college system. Though Yale is continuing its regular college renovation schedule next year with the overhaul of Timothy Dwight, it will suspend its schedule during the 2002-03 school year to renovate Vanderbilt Hall. Although the scaffolding came off Vanderbilt just this week after several months of installing more energy-efficient windows, the dorm remains the only building on Old Campus not to have been renovated recently. The University had originally hoped to revamp Vanderbilt over the summer—as Welch and Lawrence were this past year—but the scale of the work required made that impossible. Yale planners determined that no single phase of the renovations could be completed in a three- or four-month stretch.

COURTESY YALE MANUSCRIPTS AND ARCHIVES In the '60s, Yale had plans for the 13th and 14th residential colleges. One plan proposed interconnected modernist buildings to be built between Temple Street and Whitney Avenue.

Arch Currie, director of project management for Yale Facilities, explained that the work will be quite substantial. "All building systems—which include heating, electrical services and telecommunication devices—will be upgraded," he said. "We're also going to examine the safety of the building—roof stability, wall security, all that. And we're going to try to fix up the outside appearance of the building, give it a fresh look."

Though such improvements will be welcome changes to the crumbling Vanderbilt, the college system will pay a high price once the scaffolding returns to one of Old Campus' most storied buildings. The dorm's temporary closure will force the Administration to make some tough choices for its displaced students, and all of Yale's options seem to contradict the goals of the college system.

What plans?

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the current situation is that, even though the Administration does not yet have a final housing plan for the 2002-03 school year, all the officials the Herald spoke to had different—even contradictory—visions for what could happen.

"I've heard suggestions of a wide variety of plans," President Richard Levin, GRD '74, said. "There are a number of obvious solutions. One major proposition is simply to take everyone in [Old Campus] annex housing and put them in Swing Space." So as the University has publicly remained committed to the idea of keeping freshmen together on Old Campus, the buzz around Yale has been that annexed students will get Swing Space, which will be empty in 2002-03. But this would create a sort of hodge-podge of undergraduates in an isolated corner of campus, an idea that seems unrealistic to some Administrators. "My understanding is that we can't get enough spaces on Old Campus simply by moving off the annexed students," Dean Richard Brodhead, BR '68, GRD '72, said.

"I just can't get the numbers to make it work," Associate Dean of Administrative Affairs John Meeske said. "There are about 170 annexed students on the Old Campus, while Vanderbilt Hall houses approximately 300 freshmen."

Therefore, it has become fairly certain that at least some freshmen will be forced off Old Campus, but when pressed on the issue, Administrators remained decidedly cagey. Asked this week if freshmen would be moved from Old Campus in 2002, Brodhead simply said, "I believe that could be logically deduced [from the housing numbers]." Levin seemed to contradict Brodhead, however. "It won't necessarily be freshmen [who are displaced]," he said. When asked this week if he was still committed to the idea of keeping freshmen on Old Campus, Levin responded, "Well, there certainly will be freshmen on Old Campus," but he avoided the real question of precisely how many or exactly which ones.

Skinny on the options, fat on the promises

But with so many conflicting plans from Administrators, it remains unclear where the class of 2006 will end up during its first year at Yale. At this point, the only option Levin, Brodhead, and Meeske all confirmed as a possibility involves moving Morse and Stiles freshmen to Swing Space. Since Swing Space is directly across the street from those two colleges, many feel the disruption to the college experience would be minimal.

But this plan would clearly have its disadvantages. "I wouldn't want to start with the idea of freshmen in isolation from other freshmen and upperclassmen," Brodhead said. "Freshmen in TD and Silliman already live in isolation from other freshmen, which is a loss, but they live with upperclassmen, which is a gain. To have a group of freshmen living in complete isolation is clearly not ideal." Levin disagreed with Brodhead's assessment. "It wouldn't just be freshmen in Swing Space," he said, implying that Morse and Stiles upperclassmen might share the dorm. "There is a strong argument for putting Morse and Stiles freshmen in Swing Space, but if they do end up there, the colleges themselves will have a lot of input in the process." Exactly how Levin would hope to lure Morse and Stiles upperclassmen into Swing Space remains unclear, especially since, unlike current students in the dorm, they wouldn't live with the promise of a brand-new, renovated college the following year.

Another possibility for Yale is to squeeze 300 freshmen into the 170 annex spaces that currently exist on Old Campus. Promised cuts in class size, combined with bunk beds in large singles, may make such a feat possible—but Yale would still face the unpleasant task of finding homes for the displaced annex students. The only logical plan—housing those students in Swing Space—seems particularly undesirable, as it would further distance the already isolated annexed students. For example, although annexed Trumbull students now live almost directly across the street from their college, a move to Swing Space would mean a 10-minute walk to their own dining hall. Perhaps more significant, though, is that if Swing Space becomes an isolated outpost for students forced from various colleges, it will create a vast separation between members of the same college—a separation that seems to undercut the fundamental idea of community behind the college system.

Still, the University has sought to downplay the impact of the Vanderbilt renovation, emphasizing that the building will only be closed for a year. "It's important to remember that the renovation of Vanderbilt is being done for the advantage of freshmen for decades to come," Brodhead said. "Whether we'll be able to keep freshmen on Old Campus remains to be seen—but whatever we do, it's ultimately for the advantage of freshmen."

At this point, it would seem surprising that the Administration has no concrete plans for 2002-03, considering that the housing crisis has been looming for years. Two years ago, when the University forced Davenport sophomores into quads, unhappy students complained about being forced to "live in a box," chanting, "Housing sucks!" and lighting a bonfire to protest the decision. Last year, sophomores in Trumbull were shocked to hear that 20 members of their class would not be guaranteed housing as juniors. The Trumbull room draw was suspended indefinitely as students hung out banners that read, "Don't leave us homeless."

And annexation problems are sure to worsen next year, when much of the Cambridge Arms apartment building and all of the neighboring Oxford will undergo major renovations. Earlier this year, the buildings' manager, Peter Smith, described them as being in "total disrepair." The 78 units in the two apartments account for a significant portion of Yale's off-campus housing.

'Pies in the sky?'

The current problems stem largely from Yale's failure to predict the surge in students wanting to live in renovated colleges. "Every year more and more people want to live on campus," Meeske admitted. "Of course all of us recognized that as a possible problem, but we were reluctant to do anything until we were actually faced with the issue." Clearly, the University knew a housing problem was on the horizon, and after years of waiting, that problem has turned into a major crisis.

Still, a number of small moves, such as partitioning living rooms in Vanderbilt to carve out more singles, have added slightly to the total number of spaces available. Meeske also recently announced that the University would allocate rooms before the housing lottery begins in the spring. "The consensus among the Deans was, `Even if we have fewer spaces, we would rather know exactly what we have going into it than end up with a last-minute crunch,'" he said.

But such short-term changes apparently were not enough, a fact Levin made clear by revealing Yale would admit as many as 100 fewer students over the next two years. Levin told the Herald this week that in the long term, he hopes to expand Yale's enrollment, but "until such time as we can build more colleges, we must keep reducing class size."

Such a last-minute move by the Administration has prompted new questions over the persistent rumor of constructing one or two more residential colleges. Meeske dismissed talk of a 13th or 14th college as a "pie in the sky sort of thing" and refused to speculate on where the colleges might be built. Levin, however, was quite specific. "A 13th and 14th college are certainly still on the long-term drawing board," he said. "But with our current challenges—$500 million in work on Science Hill, a $250 million investment in the arts—such plans have got to be at least five years out."

Levin also referred to the recently completed Framework for Campus Planning, a 185-page book with general suggestions for Yale's future development. Although Cooper Robertson, the design group responsible for the plan, avoided being overly specific, the firm was quite prescriptive with regard to possible locations for the new colleges, proposing two sites currently occupied by Donaldson Commons and the 124 Prospect St. Building. Levin supported the Framework's suggestion that two colleges be built simultaneously. "The economics certainly favor doing two at once," he said. "Hopefully they would be able to share facilities such as a common kitchen."

Levin also dismissed the rumor that Swing Space will be converted into a 13th college. "That has not been the thinking," he said. "The fact that each room has kitchenette—but the dorm itself lacks a kitchen—makes it a stronger candidate for graduate and professional housing."

An end in sight?

With another decade of renovation ahead and the 13th and 14th colleges remaining at least five years down the road, it certainly seems like a grim time for Yale's college system. Indeed, the University's continued emphasis on its residential colleges as a key selling point seems to be getting cheaper and cheaper.

"Our Residential Colleges are unique settings for intellectual and social life, providing an array of literary, artistic, musical, dramatic and athletic adventures," Levin wrote in a letter to incoming freshmen this year. "You will find the colleges energetic and accessible communities, where you will learn much from one another. The residential collegiate spirit enriches Yale's efforts to fulfill its primary mission—to conserve, interpret and advance our knowledge of humanity and nature." Levin certainly relishes the chance to hype the colleges to prospective students and incoming freshmen. But will he save the system for the students who are already here?

Front graphic by Hyura Choi and Erin I. Lewis. Photo by Erin I. Lewis.

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