Changing spaces: Part 2 of 3

The SkyHall buildings on South Campus will undergo a makeover this summer, once again changing which students are designated to live in the three buildings.

The double rooms in SkyHall III will be converted into large single rooms with a full-size bed and will only be available to currently enrolled students, said Sara Miller, associate director of Syracuse University News Services, in an email. The conversion will shrink the number of students living in SkyHall III from 117 to 63.

SkyHalls I and II will only house transfer students this fall. SkyHalls I, II and III currently house transfer students and students from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Housing projections led to the decision that SkyHalls I and II could hold transfer students this fall, Miller said.

The renovations planned for this summer also include changing the bathrooms in the SkyHalls into eight private, gender-neutral bathrooms on each floor, Miller said. Crews will complete construction work this summer, and the renovated rooms in SkyHall III should be available by the fall, she said.

‘The expectation is the bathroom renovation and the full-size beds will be attractive to returning students,’ she said.

This is not the first time SU has changed who lives in the SkyHall buildings. Due to a large freshmen class in fall 2005, SU started assigning rooms to freshmen in the SkyHalls that semester, according to an article published Jan. 26, 2009, in The Daily Orange. Then in fall 2009, the SkyHalls began only housing transfer students, from both ESF and SU, and ESF students, according to the article.

As renovations go on at the SkyHalls during the summer, the construction of Centennial Hall — which will house 452 ESF students — will reach completion, according to the ESF website.

Some ESF students who live in the SkyHalls now are planning to move into Centennial Hall. Others will live off campus next year. But with Centennial Hall up and running, it will make for the first ESF-student-only dorm.

‘I kind of feel like it’s going to define the segregation between SU and ESF a little bit more because we won’t be in their dorms,’ said Elise Iannone, a freshman conservation biology major who lives in SkyHall III. ‘Then maybe they won’t think we mooch as much.’

At SkyHall III, the conversion of Iannone’s double room into a single will make it easier for other students to live in, she said. SkyHall’s large singles are currently 12-feet-1-inch by 14-feet-2-inches, according to room dimensions on the Office of Housing, Meal Plans and ID Card Services website. Iannone can’t study at her own desk because she keeps items on it that she has nowhere else to place in her room, she said.

Iannone is not alone in her issues with the size of the SkyHall doubles.

‘All my friends that go to other colleges say that these are the smallest dorm rooms they’ve ever seen,’ said Valerie Mitchell, a freshman wildlife science major, as she took a break from playing pool in the first-floor lounge of SkyHall III on Monday afternoon.

Some students have found ways to deal with their cramped quarters. Shawn Donnelly, a freshman forestry resources management major, reorganized his room in SkyHall III to make more open space in the middle. Other students have tried making bunk beds, he said.

‘It’s not a huge deal. I mean, it’d be nice to have a little bit more room,’ he said. ‘But it is what it is.’

For Jenny Eberl, a sophomore transfer student and wildlife science major, her room in SkyHall III is larger than the double room she lived in when she attended SUNY Fredonia, she said. The beds are higher in her SkyHall room as well, allowing her to fit more items under her bed, she said.

ESF students say they’ve bonded on their floors in the SkyHalls, as many took classes together or befriended each other. Some say the next students will interact less at first when the rooms are converted into singles.

Eric Fisher, a freshman landscape architecture major whose room will also be converted, said not having nearly as many people would change the social environment on the floor.

While Fisher said he would have liked having a few SU freshmen living on his floor this year, he recalled a discussion he heard when SU students received a snow day on March 7 and ESF students did not.

‘I actually overheard a conversation where SU students were saying how they had the day off, but the ‘tree huggers’ still had school,’ Fisher said. ‘So I think we both have different views of each other already.’

mcboren@syr.edu

Published on March 29, 2011 at 12:00 pm