Elis remain lukewarm about college expansion
Sledge: Corporation unlikely to be influenced by poll results showing only one in four students in favor
The University’s proposal to build two new residential colleges, which come before the Corporation later this month, has the support of only one in four Yale undergraduates, according to a poll conducted by the News last week.
In a poll of 362 undergraduates, 49 percent of respondents said they are against the expansion proposal, while 25 percent said they are in favor and another 25 percent were undecided. The results are nearly identical to those of a similar poll conducted by the News in October, when 48 percent of respondents said they were against building new colleges and...
Of course, several hundred of the respondents wouldn't be here if it weren't for the addition of Morse and Stiles.
It's not about building them or not, it's about putting them within close proximity of the other colleges. Yale is currently the only school where students can walk to all their friends' dormitories in two minutes. Putting colleges two blocks past Silliman/Morse will turn Yale into a place like anywhere else, and kill the unique kind of social life we have here. The colleges should be built by the Yale Music School, at HGS, across from TD/SM at Temple and Wall Streets, behind the British Art Center, or on Broadway so that they don't disturb the scale of Yale.
Dear #3 (preserve the scale of Yale), I wholeheartedly agree with everything you said except for your assertion that "Yale is the only school where students can walk to all their friends' dormitories in two minutes." I just checked on Google Earth and the walking distance from Pierson to Silliman is 0.61 miles. At Princeton, the two farthest apart undergraduate dormitories are Forbes and Holder, which are 0.54 miles apart by foot. While this is clearly a negligible difference, you and whoever else keeps saying this should stop asserting that Yale is the only school with all the dorms so close together. As a comparison, the proposed location of the new colleges is 0.90 miles walking distance from Pierson and 0.54 miles from Silliman.
Unbelievable! It will ruin Yale if you have to walk 10 minutes to get from one college to another? The childishness of some Yale students never ceases to amaze...
Most of the respondents will be long gone by the time these are built. Never mind the distance, how many homes could be built for the price of these two monuments to excess?
I would be all for the expansion if the following conditions are met:
1) expand the faculty (and # of grad students because we need TAs) proportionally so the faculty/student ratio does not go down. there's already too many big crowded lecture classes and sections that are too big as it is.
2) build them closer to campus. behind the cemetery is simply unacceptable. it will be like a satellite campus. build one behind the British Art Center and another on that parking lot behind Luis Lunch.
3) Invest it good architecture. No more georgian, please. Maybe collegiate gothic if they were to do it right, but I'd rather see something a little more of our time. Hire some awesome contemporary architect like MVRDV.
4) never add more colleges again.