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New Brown Hall renovations anger residents

On Oct. 29, Housing and Residence Life announced that they will be starting renovations in Brown  Hall in Jan. 2021. The renovations are expected to be finished by Aug. 2021.

The renovations will focus on updating the style of the community bathrooms to private shower and toilet bathrooms with changing space.

Brown Hall currently has 178 residents who all have to move to other resident halls by the end of the fall semester. They will be moved to other resident halls like Centennial and Hopper where there are available spaces. Residents will also have to pay the full housing price of their new resident hall.

While a planned renovation of Brown Hall will bring needed upgrades, the timing of the construction and the distraction that comes with it has angered some current residents. On Oct. 29, Housing and Residence Life announced that they will be starting renovations in Brown Hall in January 2021. The renovations are expected to be finished by Aug. 2021.

Brown Hall currently has 178 residents who all have to move to other resident halls by the end of the fall semester. They will be moved to other residence halls like Centennial and Hopper where there are available spaces. Residents will also have to pay the full housing price of their new residence hall.

While the renovations will benefit the next residents, who will live in Brown Hall next year some current residents are not happy with the abrupt transition.

Wendy Castillo, freshman sociology and anthropology, is upset she has to move and wished the renovations were better planned out.

“I feel like they should not have done it last minute and the fact that they moved us in during the fall just to move us back out for the spring just doesn’t make sense to me,” she said. “I’m not going to be able to enjoy said renovations next year so, the benefit doesn’t really come to me. They’re also sending out emails late. A lot of us don’t know where we’re being moved to.”

James Fead, freshman health science major, said he already has a heavy work load and can’t afford to be distracted from it with unexpected changes.

“Right now it affects us because we have to move while we have classes, I have a lot of classes, seven to be exact,” he said. “It messes my whole schedule up. “

Dr. Zduy Chu, Director of Housing and Residence Life, said that the office has tried to limit the effect on students.

“While we have attempted to schedule this work to have minimal impact on housing assignments, unfortunately all bathrooms in the building will be out of service beginning January 2021 until July 2021. As a result, we must close the building.” he said.

The renovations will focus on updating the style of the community bathrooms to private shower and toilet bathrooms with changing space.

Dr. Chu also said that there are still some things up in the air before the Brown Hall renovations begin.

“Residential rates are approved through the Board of Regents from a recommendation of VSU,” he said. “At this point, we are uncertain what the new rates will be. At this time, none of our halls are originally designated as a specific gender layout. When Brown reopens, we will revisit occupancy needs next Summer, we will make the determination based on our application pool.”

This year finals fall on Dec. 8-11 and Douglas Tuner, freshman engineering major, is not happy about stressing over where he will stay on top of the usual stress of finals.

“To be honest I think it’s some [BS] because if they knew they were going to renovate they should have done it at the beginning of the year or during the summer,” he said. “Not the end of the year when we have finals because now they’re messing up our study time. We might not do so well on the finals because we’re stressing about moving out, moving in and where we’re going because they haven’t sent any emails or nothing.”

Written by Lenah Allen, Editor-In-Chief. Photo courtesy of Lenah Allen.

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