Monday marked the opening of the Gateway Academic Center’s South Hall. If you’ve kept up with any of my past editorials like “A University on the Rise,” you may know that I’m not really a fan of campus construction.
In general, I believe construction is a trade-off that negatively affects current students. Gateway, or Gianforte, or Gianforte Family, or Gateway again now I guess, has closed down 6th Street since the summer of my freshman year. For two years (though they went by fast), I actually lived above O’Bagel but couldn’t walk up 6th Street to get to class. For two years, there was no direct path from campus to Gio’s, so, well, these days none of the new kids know what it’s like to get off class and go to Gio’s. It’s crazy!! Residents of River Terrace had to hear drilling and deal with random power outages and workers going in and out of their homes. That must have been the worst.
People that have graduated can come back and look at the new buildings and revel in their gorgeousness, but they most likely won’t. I was chatting with a few folks who were “prepared for it to be disappointing,” and that was me too. But woah, no, it (or what’s open so far) is really freaking gorgeous.
It looks so modern, with the integration of bricks from Carnegie contrasted with the wood floors and white furniture. There’s a ton of lounge and study spaces for people to just hang out, several larger academic lecture halls, a ton of offices upstairs, and for some reason, all-gender showers. Why would you have showers in an academic building? While wandering around at night, I easily got lost in its beauty and also because it was so big — and only half of the complex.
So, though I hate to admit it, construction may be worth the wait. I’m sure Stevens rushed the job to accommodate classes that were meeting in the most random places, and inevitably there will problems that will arise (I think most people have seen the picture of the broken door handle). That’s okay, and pretty typical of Stevens. But you can already see so many students benefitting from the increased space, especially commuters who were really strapped on space after Jacobus and Hayden were demolished.
Whether or not the University Towers will be just as amazing is a different question which I’m actually excited to find out the answer to now. My two cents on Stevens’ 10-year plan and growth initiatives are for another time, but for now, I really think a lot of students are finally starting to see that despite the dusty air and loud noises disrupting all of campus, new buildings when completed are really cool. Older generations of Stevens students also endured major transformational change, especially during the times Howe and the library were built. Stuters from back then probably whined for ages, because only future generations would benefit from the major transformation. But I guess if the school improves over time, the value of your degree also increases, so we might all benefit in the end.
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