Walking around the campus, any visitor would get a slice of the University’s history. It’s in the moss climbing up the side of the brick buildings and in the crevices of the sidewalk. Although the school has evolved internally and program-wise, the school holds true to its deep, historical roots. It is the mosquito frozen in time by the amber-colored tree sap of a case.
Well, this mosquito is busting out.
In this obscure metaphor, I am referring to the Global Scholars Hall@@http://housing.uoregon.edu/reshalls/globalscholars.php@@: Oregon’s shiny new doll house. Global Scholars Hall is not only a mouthful to say, but there’s also a sense of awe associated with the new dorm building.
For the longest time, I thought nothing of the new building. I mean, it’s on the edge of campus — across the street from Bean — it has a dining hall with the highest-quality dining food a public university in America can offer, and it will have the same furniture Carson and the LLC have. Oh, but wait! Stop the presses; these dorms will have SUITES! I know how it is with these “suites,” so when I hear people react to the suite rooms, I roll my eyes.
On January 25 and 26, the new hall held an open house. I was just curious as to what the halls were about. I just wanted to see if the building lived up to its implied hype of kicking the Living-Learning Center’s ass.
They had two floors open, the second and the fifth. The second floor had the suites, singles and doubles available for touring. Long story short: Oregon went all-out for these dorms. The doubles were so spacious, I mistook them for a triple. I figured that the standard double in the new hall was the enhanced double in the rest of the dorms. Since not every room has a bathroom (but every room now comes equipped with a sink), there are still community bathrooms. But here’s the catch: the bathrooms come with shower stalls. Private, walled-off stalls with locking-stall doors. I wanted to live in one of the rooms now just so that I could use the shower.
Let’s move on up to the washing. Each floor will have a washer and dryer, but instead of one or two per floor, there will be four. With some forty people per floor — my floor currently has approximately 80 — that’s 10 people per washer/dryer. It may seem like a lot of people, but it’s Heaven compared to the 40 people per washer/dryer my floor has.
Now, the triple suites are the ones that got me. These rooms are huge, as far as college dorms go. I could fit half my basement into it. In college dorm terms, that’s three doubles with sinks meshed together in one room.
Oregon’s mission for this dorm building is the language immersion of German, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, French, Japanese and so on, hence the name “Global Scholars Hall.” But I think the dorms are more than that. Aside from being the star dorms on campus, Oregon is trying to get a message out to the world: We are a top-notch university. Top-notch education, top-notch sustainability and top-notch dorm buildings to live in. You’ll live in a dorm, but it won’t feel like a dorm. Which is great considering the only people getting into the dorms will be upperclassmen. That is, unless the rumored Freshman Interest Groups that will be nabbing a hall or two actually nab a hall or two.
Oregon is trying to shed its old-school feel and cast itself into the future. They want a top-notch look. It’s happening all over campus with the science complex, Allen Hall, PLC and maybe with the EMU. Although the old University will always be here, there’s a new University in the making, and I am looking forward to seeing what this school will blossom into.