Plans for the renovation of Newing College and Dickinson Community are still under debate as the school year opens, and some students are showing concern about the future of their respective communities.
The current draft of the plans has Dickinson being moved outside of the Brain, the main road around the campus, adjacent to Newing. Placed between the two communities, Newing Dining Hall will be expanded into a collegiate center shared by the two.
Matt Landau, the vice president for academic affairs of the Student Association and a former Newing resident, is one of several students who feel that these plans are taking away from the individuality of the two communities.
‘[The communities] need individual dining halls,’ said Landau. ‘Otherwise, Newing and Dickinson are basically going to be one super-community.’
In response to this, Landau created a group on facebook.com, titled ‘KEEP NEWING & DICKINSON THE WAY IT IS’ with the intention of rallying students toward the cause.
Plans to increase the number of students living in each community and to include aspects of suite-style living in the buildings’ designs are listed as concerns of the group. At the time of this printing, the group supported a total of 213 Binghamton University students.
‘It is an incredible number to show just how many people agree,’ Landau said.
According to the Binghamton University administration, however, everything is being done to take student and faculty input into consideration.
‘Some concepts of the suite-style living were proposed at one of the town hall meetings,’ said James VanVoorst, vice president for Administration. ‘Those plans were knocked down.’
The most recent designs have rooms laid out in a corridor style, but without communal floor bathrooms.
While plans have not yet been finalized, the design for the dining hall remains as a single complex shared by both Newing and Dickinson. This has left some dissatisfied.
‘The dining hall is a central feature of any community,’ Landau said. ‘It is part of their identity, their sense of community.’
Apparently, students agree. The Newing College Council, during a meeting last semester, held a vote for individual dining halls to be included in the renovation plans. The result was a unanimous decision in favor of separate eating facilities.
VanVoorst assures that there will be more town hall meetings where students and faculty can discuss these and other details before plans are finalized. The next meeting will most likely take place this December.
‘In a few years, this will be a great place to live,’ he said. ‘We still want to keep the sense of history in the buildings ‘ the rest is up to the architects.’