Summer housing moves to GLC

Students staying at UR over the summer will be housed in deKiewiet and Valentine Towers in the Graduate Living Center this summer. For the past several years, students were housed in Anderson and Wilder Towers. However, this summer those buildings will be undergoing critical upgrades to the electrical system, making them uninhabitable for the summer.”The decision to move students to deKiewiet and Valentine Towers was a no-brainer,” Director of Residential Life Logan Hazen said. “[Anderson and Wilder] Towers are the last two residential areas to be upgraded. We will be doing a critical $2 million overhaul including replacing the electrical system and various other building upgrades.”When Anderson and Wilder Towers were built in 1963, students did not have the appliances and computers they do today. Since the electrical system is not capable of meeting current demand, all of the existing wiring will be replaced. The new wiring will provide each student with 20 amps of power, which is a substantial increase over the existing system, according to Hazen.Until five years ago, summer students were always housed in GLC. Recently, however, students were able to live in Towers instead of GLC. Hazen describes the decision to move students to GLC over the summer as opposed to one of the other residential halls on River Campus as straightforward. “Students enjoy the communal, apartment style, housing arrangement over the summer,” he said. “Another major factor is cooking facilities,” Hazen continued. “Since dining services has limited hours over the summer, it is important for students to have easy access to a stove.” In GLC each three-room apartment has a kitchen. Other residential areas including Susan B. Anthony Residence Halls and the Residential Quad have shared floor kitchens. It would be difficult for many students to have to share one kitchen.GLC is also better equipped than it used to be when it housed summer residents. “Last summer GLC was upgraded,” Hazen said. “The kitchens were redone and we installed separate phone, Internet, See GLC, Page 5Continued from Page 3and cable jacks in each room as opposed to one shared jack for all of the apartment residents.”Generally students are pleased that the problems with the electrical system will be addressed and are willing to sacrifice location convenience over the summer to make improvements. “It’s good that the electrical system will be upgraded,” current Towers resident and sophomore Nora Seidman said. “Two of the lights in my suite flicker because of power drains. It’s annoying to have to call facilities when they can’t really do anything to address the problem.” “I don’t mind living in GLC instead of Towers,” summer resident, Senator and sophomore Ben Ratner said. “Last year the small rooms in Towers got really hot. Hopefully the larger GLC rooms will stay cooler. Since it’s nice weather and buses do come to GLC I don’t think that transportation will be a problem. Overall, GLC will be more amenable to my needs.”ResLife has not finalized all of the parts of the summer housing program, but it will be similar to previous years. Room fees are expected to be comparable to last year. If students request to live together, they will be able to share an apartment. Also, students will be asked to move to a different floor one time during the summer in order to allow building service workers an opportunity to deep clean each room.”We have not worked out all aspects of the program yet,” Hazen said. “We are still debating about how many people we will have living in each apartment.” Since one of the three bedrooms in GLC apartments is smaller than the other two, the smaller room may be left vacant depending on the demand for housing.Parking Office Clerk Andrew Cowen said that students will be able to purchase parking passes for Valentine Lot at GLC for the summer. Like during the school year, students will be able to park their cars with permits anywhere on campus after 4 p.m. on weekdays and all day during the weekends.Keesing can be reached at jkeesing@campustimes.org