This weekend's viral news story is about a new freshman dorm being built at UC Santa Barbara. It originated because one member of the Design Review Committee at UCSB didn't like the plan. The other 12 were presumably fine with it, as is the university administration.
So why does anyone care about (a) one dissent (b) at a middling university (c) over a new dorm? Because (a) the dorm was designed and funded by a quirky zillionaire and (b) the rooms don't have windows.
This sounds nice to me—or at least worth a try, anyway. The dorm is based on suites that contain eight little bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a common area in the middle for studying. The lack of windows means the rooms should be nice and quiet at night, and single rooms for everyone means not putting up with annoying roommates constantly telling you to get lost for an hour or two because they want to bring their current love interest over.
But on Twitter, you'd think that UCSB students are being put in Supermax cells. Seriously. This is apparently what passes for enlightened progressive thought these days. It's why you should ignore Twitter.
Most of the articles on it didn't even mention that they've built a version of it already at University of Michigan Ann Arbor. Students seem to be fine with it, although a few think the lack of windows on the rooms is weird looking at reviews.
I thought there might be a fire hazard there, but they've got plenty of windows and space in the common areas nearby. Plus people have been traveling by ship in interior cabins for a long time, and it's fine - it's only annoying if you're spending all your time in there (it would suck if you had to quarantine in a windowless room).
.
This boatswain's mate says that you get used to it.
I can believe it.
Pain - or Boats
See this?
https://news.usni.org/2021/11/01/investigation-concludes-uss-connecticut-grounded-on-uncharted-sea-mount-in-south-china-sea
Seems our latest Seawolf Sub suffered a minor accident
OR
Maybe the lead line thrower was asleep.........../s
All that electronic gear onboard and they hit an uncharted seamount?????
In this day and age????????
Hard to "fathom"............
You had me at hard to fathom...
A passive system wouldn't detect a seamount methinks. And subs love silence. In the 90's, an ice breaker I served in had a depth sounding array that mapped a mount south of Newfoundland. Completely unknown beforehand.
The UM building is a residence hall for graduate students and contains small groups of individual rooms, each of them with their own baths. Each group of these suites has its own large, windowed living area so basically anyone living there steps out of their room into a naturally lit space. The whole building houses just 630 students.
The UCSB project bears little resemblance to that. There each group of eight rooms is just a piece of a massive block that includes seven more such groups, which together all share a living area on a windowed portion of the exterior wall. Someone living in one of the innermost groups would step out of their room into the group's windowless common area and from their into the hallway connecting the entire block -- and still be over 200 feet away from the nearest window! And 4500 students are expected to live this way!
Some coverage of the Michigan dorms: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/11/02/business/munger-residences-michigan-windowless/index.html
The selling point 0f UC-Surfboard is the brilliant ocean vistas, so of course the answer to continuing to enroll students is taking away the chance to see the ocean from their dorm rooms.
Robot likes to live in tiny box. Surprise!
Insistence by "progressives" that everyone live EXACTLY the same way they choose to live; god forbid people have a choice of dorm room type. Surprise!
Okay this sounds like it was written by a bot. Are you a bot?
Imagine insisting everyone should have human rights. The horror!
Or put another way, no need to learn to put-up with the desires of others and/or negotiate to a common understanding...
Some bits from the WaPo article:
In other words, they will consume power...
(Emphasis mine)
My take on the image of the facade is it looks like a variation on the theme of a Federal office building or a late 19th or early 20th century office building.
Still, all in all, with that level of density and such, perhaps it will serve as good training for the future exemplified by Corben Dallas' digs in "Fifth Element" (though it should be noted even he had a window...)
Multipass?
Ruby Rod remains the ur-trans icon.
Uhhhh, I identify as a meat popsicle.
So, nonbinary.
Point still stands.
Heh.
Modern fortress architecture.
With only 2 bathrooms for 8 single rooms, there will likely be some need to negotiate, don't you think?
Anyone who would pay high rates to live in a small windowless room will likely regret it.
I see from earlier comments that there will be ONE bathroom per "suite," rather than two. What is this that anyone would inflict on students? And why would Kevin Drum be in favor of it?
Makes me feel better about not attending my college of choice to live at home to care for my invalid mother.
Because Drum is beyond the interests of students. He got his.
What they used to call the Brutalist style.
Or more likely the other 12 were not sufficiently upset about it to be willing to forgo their paychecks/honoraria, and the university administration not sufficiently displeased to forgo the Rather Large Check (tm) from the donor...
Without being able to read the story behind the paywall, I am sceptical here of kevin blaming " progressive thought " here.
While I would expect that much of the criticism of this will be from left wing viewpoints and couched in talking points from the left , I would guess that is simply because this is being built on a university that is more left leaning ( as are most).
If the same was being built at liberty u , gaurantee there would be plenty of opposition from a right wing perspective.
Kevin may be right to think that the opposition is overstated and maybe this is worth a try . But not everything has to be seen through a political lens.
On power use , my guess ( might be wrong) is that the power savings from better insulation on heating and cooling will outweigh the need to power lighting.
“ Without being able to read the story behind the paywall…”
You could subscribe…
Or delete your washingtonpost.com cookie and try again.
Here's a local article about it:
https://www.independent.com/2021/10/28/architect-resigns-in-protest-over-ucsb-mega-dorm/?fbclid=IwAR1JhHADKxRfPUCYSgOWxRmnKP30RH3iPdFryafEBXn4mWIbIjKlpVS9Hzs
Shirley the UC system possesses not any middling universities??...
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/08/university-california-offers-pretty-good-bang-buck-now/ Has the system finally crumbled? (BTW, if you try to follow the link therein to the WaMo article of the time, one will get an Internal Server Error (500) - example 9,407,452 for why one should use archive dot org if one give a whit about persistence. And having just been mildly hoisted by a petard in that fashion, let me re-do that reference: https://web.archive.org/web/20120831191346/http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/08/university-california-offers-pretty-good-bang-buck-now
And they weren't so middling to preclude using them as a reference: https://web.archive.org/web/20110825061655/http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/08/ever-changing-science-global-warming
Don't call me Surely.
I ate the fish.
I had lasagna.
I would say that having only two entrances seems problematic for a number of reasons.
Obviously fire. But also if a terrorist wanted to trap and kill a bunch of college students, having to only control two entrances will make it easy.
Two entrances, but 6 additional emergency exits. Presumably the two entrances would make it safer because then staff could monitor who comes in more closely.
OK that makes more sense.
I remember an old science fiction book about a massive arcology built after los angeles riots ( was it called to Todos Santos I think).
Reminds me of that .
Even with the donor overseeing the project, it has to meet code.
Not sure why people would be upset--they're not even close to the Japanese capsule hotel/sleeping pod concept.
For those my age who went to college in the 70s , to have students today complain about the dorms and food there today is laughable. Living conditions are far better. Today's more spoiled students would not have accepted what we did.
I remember the old motto at my school re the food. It is so bad you have to eat a lot of it.
Except when it was a weekend the parents visited. Boy suddenly then the food was pretty good .
Spoken like a man who never had to stomach Oberlin banh mi.
Turn in your Kevin Drum Official Blog Commenter Antiwoke Card now.
Oh I don't know the dorms at VA Tech were cinder-block without AC, no cable but at least they had a window for each dorm room. I can't get over the idea of not having a real widow, that would freak me out. The dorms were built in the 1960s and 1970s
I would prefer the Japanese pod hotels to this.
Most people don’t live every single day and night for months on end in the capsule hotels/pods in Japan. Even if they’re in them for every weeknight, Japanese businessmen go home to a real bedroom with windows on the weekends. The kids assigned to this dorm won’t be able to do that unless their families live in the immediate surrounding area.
8 total exits for 4500 students does not seem sufficient, but I'll have to ask my former coworkers who enforce the fire code.
Never lived in a dorm myself but I can't imagine not having windows. Besides the joy of opening them on spring days, they were essential for moderating the intense heat coming from the radiator in winter, for putting beers out to get cold really quickly in January, and for putting speakers into so we could hear the latest Talking Heads while messing around in the yard.
I don’t know how you define “middling” but a little googling will tell you that UCSB has gotten pretty hard to get in to. You have to have good grades and SAT scores to even stand a chance. Because, as the conservatives are always telling us, California is a terrible place and no one wants to come here. /s
It ranked in the top 5 public universities pretty recently. KD is objectively wrong. It's in no way "middling". The reputation UCSB had for being purely a party school was inaccurate when I went there in the 90's.
The writer bombed out of CalTech & ended up at Cal State - Long Beach. & forty years later, he's still angry over that.
How can they be in the top 5 without a real football team?
/s
I read Washington Monthly to find out.
They still rate Beloit College way too high. But at least that pervert professor behind the Mindset List took his worthless ass to Marist.
Go Gauchos!
I thought they were the banana slugs?
Banana slugs would be UC Santa Cruz.
Ah I'm getting my Santa's mixed up!!!!!
The War on Christmas 2021 has its first fatality.
I went there a decade before you. Even then, it was by no means "purely" a party school. That was an option, of course. You could drink and fornicate for four years and come out with your bachelors in Communications or Business Administration, so long as you put in the minimal effort required to maintain your gentleman's Cs. But if you were there for an education, that too was on offer, in the sciences and engineering and yes, even the humanities. I don't know if the humanities option is still available today. I would be saddened but not surprised to learn it is not.
Many years later I lived in Indiana, Pennsylvania. Out of curiosity I took a look at the course offerings at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. It clearly was a party school. That was immediately apparent the first time I drove in town after dark. I wondered if it was also possible to get an education there. My impression was that while not impossible, it was not encouraged.
My son got a scholarship there, for graduate school. Engineering.
Thanks for a valuable lesson. I thought the best university was the one producing the smartest graduates. I stand corrected, the best university is the one who admits the smartest students. Or rather those with the highest grades--far from the same thing.
It looks like a prison.
"This is apparently what passes for enlightened progressive thought these days."
This and delay caused by progressives in passing anything in Congress. When Republicans win in Virginia on Tuesday, I wonder if progressives will learn their lesson?
Nah.
Seriously? In which reality? Although I do like the one where Joe Manchin, Krysten Sinema, and the entire Republican Party don't exist.
You do see zaphod said "delay ".
Yes , the reason that the original reconciliation bill progressive wish list will never pass this congress is because of 50 republican senators and two democrats. And 52 is a majority out of 100. We have a word for the majority getting their way. It begins with demo ..
And it is actually more than that . Guarantee there are other democratic senators who do not agree with all of it too - and likely enough democratic house members to block it too. But they are A OK with letting sinema and manchin be the public face.
What zaphod is saying is delayed is whatever final compromise bill might eventually pass which CAN manage to squeak out a majority . You know what can actually happen in a democracy. And progressives having a tantrum that they cannot get what they want, when they do not have a democratic majority, is stopping that. And maybe not just delay but perhaps never pass.
But, to be charitable to the progressive block, perhaps just maybe they are just trying to appear to have the maturity of 4 year old throwing a tantrum. If that is believable, it can increase their leverage to maybe get the final compromise pushed more left.
Quite possible that the true majority in congress would support only a bill spending say 1 trillion , including a group of dems who prefer that to 1.5 trillion, but also might prefer 1.5 trillion to zero. If progressives are convincing enough to make people believe that they really would just let it be zero , they can get the 1.5 trillion.
The one with the most negotiating leverage is often the " crazy " side who will tear the whole thing down if they do not get their way. But dangerous game as sometimes the whole thing does come down.
Calling the US Senate a democratic institution is committing a category error.
Whatever point you are trying to make there is irrelevant to the issue.
Or maybe it is relevant . Thinking that since you think the senate is not democratic, you will insist that you can ignore it when it is the actual real life governing structure
Bunch of malarkey. Progressives have accepted a lot of compromises. The only point they have held firm on is insisting on passing the BIF and BBB together, to forestall any effort to kill BBB outright. Is there anything different about this, compared to the horse trading that has gone on in every legislature since they have existed? Nope.
If the Republicans win it will be because they lied to parents scaring them about CRT and boys dressing up as women to rape them in bathrooms.
Loudoun & other Virginia parents don't need to be lied to about CRT to harass, stalk or threaten teachers or school board members, while the Loudoun sheriff refuses to send anyone to ensure their safety.
These parents don't seem that well-educated themselves & remind me that the Virginia that Youngkin claims to have grown up in wasn't far removed from Massive Resistance, closure of public schools for 5 years, & the selling of some buildings for $1, to be reopened as whites-only schools.
As someone whose family has included teachers for multiple generations where schools were often the first things rebuilt after our town was sacked & burned by invaders from southern states, I fear the ignorance of those who ban or burn books & avoid actual history.
The slogan used to be "Don't Fairfax Loudoun." I hope that this idiocy doesn't infect Fairfax.
Progressives are right though, so what lesson is there to learn? That people are stupid and it will take them xx-years to come around to the progressive position anyway?
Please don't count youngkin votes before they're cast.
Youngkin is toast 4-8% loss
Inshallah.
The units, designed as 8 individual rooms attached to a shared common space, is actually kind of appealing. Tons of privacy allowing you to study without disruption by your roommate insisting that s/he be allowed to have guests.
But, the exterior units with real windows are going to be hot commodities in informal trading.
No it's not. It's a slum. As someone who lived in a single "apartment" where multiple rooms were subdivided into smaller rooms, albeit with a large "living/dining" area, it's THE worst living experience imaginable. There is ZERO privacy despite you having your "own shoebox" of a room.
Compared to what?
Non-slums.
I don't recall seeing any dorm that was spacious and private. Do you?
Yes I do.
If built, the dormitory will reportedly have a population density rivaling Dhaka, Bangladesh -- if that's your idea of "appealing." But you're right about one thing: the 6 percent of units with windows should prove popular.
Any given block in NYC has a greater density than Dhaka.
Nope.
Which building in NYC houses 4500 people?
An architect would have to try REALLY HARD to design a dorm without windows, assuming that **if the room was situated on an outside wall, it would have a window!**. Because, duh! **BUT** if the common, shared rooms all had glorious windows, with big balconies, THEN there would be a fantastic reason to save all windows for the community rooms. THAT would be a great way to own the Fascists!
But the way it's designed is that the windowless single rooms surround a windowless community room. Just what I want a place to live where I never get to see the sun.
I lived in a dorm which was set up with 4 smaller 2 person rooms a bathroom and a common room with a balcony.
The small rooms each had a window and the common room a big window/balcony.
The balcony idea didn't work though. Every year they would lock the doors after a few weeks when somebody threw something heavy off. Every year, for decades.
Still, in the end I preferred the setup in another dorm I lived in which had 40 slightly larger 2 person rooms and larger common areas shared by all of those.
The common rooms in this design seem quite cramped.
In the internet era, nobody can know what random trivial matter might suddenly become an issue of national importance, fuel for the insatiable furnaces of the partisan culture wars.
'This is apparently what passes for enlightened progressive thought these days. It's why you should ignore Twitter.'
You contradicted yourself, Kevin. Obviously it is NOT what passes for enlightened progressive thought these days, because you found it in Twitter.
Back in the day at Cal Piley SLO some of the students thought it funny to flush cherry bombs down the toilets. The Mountain Dorms.
Also thinking of the Chicago public housing that was torn down due to the residents did not have defensible spaces. Wonder if the jocks will terrorize the others. An interesting experiment.
There's nothing wrong with suites, but they can have windows. And I'll be damned if I'd live anywhere without one. Lack of sunlight has a serious impact on mood and mood has a serious impact on learning.
The lack of windows is one problem with the suites, granted a major one. But the other aspects of the design are just as stupid. It's basically a single apartment with 8 bedrooms, 1 living/dining area and 1 washroom. That's called a slum.
That's a strange definition of slum.
Maybe to someone without any experience.
That picture--artist's rendering?--looks like it was taken with a realtor's camera; the ones that can make a bedroom look like a ballroom.
Here's the unit.
https://www.independent.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/munger1.jpg?resize=1205%2C646?w=1024
One bathroom for eight people. Better stagger the class schedules, or it's going to look grim.
The lack of windows means the rooms should be nice and quiet at night
LOL.
If this was the case then surely all bedrooms in houses across the nation would be built without windows. Have we just been building houses wrong for 3000 years?
There are two places where bedrooms don't have windows - prisons and the cheap cabins on cruise ships. And Harry Potter's initial bedroom under the stairs.
The comparisons to a prison are apt. And given the prices students are paying to learn, sticking them in "cruise cabin" type accomodations is unconscionable.
It's clear Kevin has long ago ascended from the concerns of the masses.
It's awful. Go to the article in the Santa Barbara Independent to see what the actual floor will look like. 8 tiny rooms surrounding a windowless space with a kitchenette and conference table. One toilet and one shower. To get natural light you have to walk down a long narrow hallway to get to a modest sized room that you share with 63 other people. It's like living in the world's most depressing office tower
Even my extremely conservative father thinks it is awful.
You could deal with the windowless sleeping cubicles if the other serious design flaws weren't there, but this whole thing is atrocious.
It is designed to stroke the ego of a donor, and the university is going to spend $1.5 billion on it, which is more than $300,000 per occupant.
Presumably it’ll last for half a century or more. So it’s more like $300,000 / 50 years of freshman classes coming in = $6,000 per each future student sleeping there.
One toilet and one shower
I wonder how many students who take a long shower will be thrown off a balcony each year.
The plans show two bathrooms for each 8-room block, but they're still abysmally deficient for communal usage. The plans show bathrooms like you'd see in a typical single-family house, with a sink, a toilet, and a shower occupying each space. It would provide far more utility and maximize privacy to isolate those different functions into their own groups.
It's a design from a fella with LOTS of money - so much that its named after him.
He doesn't get to call the shots but the money buys and awful lot of committee votes.
Be thankful for that committee
The same way another amateur architect decided he could re-design Berlin just before WWII. His committee approved his design(s) too
*************************************OT COVID NEWS*********************
ANOTHER high profile breakthrough case
Presidential press secretary Jen Psaki has tested positive for COVID after being vaccinated.
She is on 10 day quarantine and will not return to in person work until she also gets a negative test result. This is why she did not travel with the President to Europe.
She tested positive on Weds. Last time she saw Joe was on Tuesday - IIRC.
Get your boosters folks. Vaccines work - far better than natural immunity according to the CDC press release on friday
There's a time frame for getting boosters, and it's not time yet.
actually,I can make an app for my moderna booster right now. I had Covid last Christmas, and got the Moderna vaccine mid February to early march. Anyone who got vaccinated January through May is eligible now.
Announcing these irrelevant cases has gotten old. Who cares. If you aren't sick, it means nothing.
Usually I think the headline of a piece is misleading and the whole story gets the truth across. In this case I think the exact opposite.
uh, wanting windows is enlightened conservative thought. You radical progressives that want to lock kids up without windows are freaky weird.
As a general principle I'd say that quirky billionaires should be forbidden to build anything on any campus. And billionaires who are not quirky too. Instead they should be made to pay their taxes.
You want your name on a tacky building? Build it on our own land!
Here is a good piece on why it is a bad idea. Mental Health.
https://www.independent.com/2021/11/01/munger-dorm-a-recipe-for-disaster/
What's next, a cafeteria where some billionare alum has prescribed dispensing only high-protein vegan shakes via robot vending machines because he has determined that regular, sit-down meals with friends are "inefficient" and "a waste of time"?
More likely a donor with a Jordan Peterson jones mandating a paleo diet.
I forget who it is, but there really is some Silicon Valley tech mogul who swears by this patented liquid diet he says saves him a ton of time versus preparing meals and eating at a table. Plus, you know, a bunch of woo about "micronutrients" supercharging his chakras and making him more creative or something.
Sorry, there is no reason to house 4500 students in a single building on a campus where most structures are less than half that height. No one should accept the crazy condition of his ridiculous plan or no moola (which covers only a small fraction of the total building cost). What a shitty precedent to be making!
I just looked at the plans and they're pretty appalling. Up to 512 students will be on each floor and share a single, main corridor down the middle of the building. Even with the ten elevators, that's nuts. (For anyone interested in the plans, the presentation of this project, along with a much smaller one, can be downloaded here [PDF].)
In a building fully equipped with automatic fire sprinklers windows are not required as a means of escape from living areas.