[bigsmooth]

Liberty starts work on six new dorms
By Ron Brown
rbrown@newsadvance.com
January 2, 2007

Liberty University is in the process of clearing land and pouring foundations for six new residence halls on the school’s East Campus.

The new dorms, which will hold 84 students each, are scheduled for completion by the start of school in August.

They will be built on land owned by the university just west of Wingate Inn and the Liberty Godparent Home.

“It gives us 500 more beds, for which we are very grateful,” said the Rev. Jerry Falwell, LU’s chancellor. “The school is growing at a rate where we have no choice but to add about 500 new beds each year.”

LU’s residential student population is scheduled to top the 10,000 mark for the first time in the 2007-2008 school year.

The projected residential enrollment should reach 10,700 students by the next school year.

Currently, about 60 percent of the school’s residential students live on campus. About 40 percent seek off-campus housing.

With the completion of the new dorms, LU will have a total of 30 dorms on its East Campus, which is on the opposite side of U.S. 460 from the school’s Main Campus.

A total of 2,520 students will be housed on East Campus next year.

“It’s a huge number of folks,” said Ron Godwin, LU’s executive vice president and chief operating officer.

With site work included, the new residence halls will cost about $1.1 million apiece. The cost of the actual buildings will be about $750,000 each.

LU Vice Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. said the school is considering building even bigger residence halls in the future.

The Rev. Falwell has set a goal of having 25,000 residential students on campus at the end of 10 years. LU is already the largest private university in Virginia.

The school is evaluating plans for dorms six stories or taller that would house at least 300 students apiece.

Following the construction of the six new dorms, the school’s next round of dorm construction should begin in fall 2007.

“We are trying to move to a different layout that has more community-type areas for groups of students to gather and have hall meetings,” Falwell Jr. said. “It would provide more of a dorm lifestyle. That’s what we want to accomplish with the next set of dorms.”

The space afforded each student would stay basically the same in the larger dorms.

“We are talking about taller dorms with concrete and steel construction,” Falwell Jr. said.

[TDDance234]

Those 6 are going to be the last of the Campus East style.

The next phase is to build dorms similiar to 33.

[PAmedic]

The Rev. Falwell has set a goal of having 25,000 residential students on campus at the end of 10 years. LU is already the largest private university in Virginia.

The school is evaluating plans for dorms six stories or taller that would house at least 300 students apiece.

Following the construction of the six new dorms, the school’s next round of dorm construction should begin in fall 2007.

and STILL no ambulance service on campus

"is there anybody out there- does anybody care"

[ATrain]

Those 6 are going to be the last of the Campus East style.

The next phase is to build dorms similiar to 33.

They'll be leveling those 1-story trailers in the circle to do that, right?

[SuperJon]

Where do they put the students who are living in those dorms while they rebuild? That's the hard part about leveling the circle. I'm all for it if we can find a place for the other kids.

[thepostman]

Where do they put the students who are living in those dorms while they rebuild? That's the hard part about leveling the circle. I'm all for it if we can find a place for the other kids.

Easy, don't grow nearly as fast....I know, crazy thought huh??

[SuperJon]

I know we could stop the growth for one year, but you're still taking a lot of beds away from students that are already here.

[thepostman]

Step 1: 6 new dorms
Step 2: DO NOT INCREASE ENROLLMENT next year
Step 3: Tear down some of the cirlce dorms, I don't remember the amount of beds are going to be in the new dorms, but lets say it 300 new beds. Tear down the amount of circle dorms that equals 300 beds....
Step 4: Build new larger dorms in their place
Step 5: Begin to Increase enrollment a little more to fill the new, larger dorms.
Step 6: tear down more circle dorms, and repeat until the circle is much improved

I really don't think its a crazy thought, but JF is so stuck on this 25,000 thing that it makes it impossible..people really need to take a stand and advise Jerry about this whole thing...but whatever, its not my call...plus I am off campus now...

[LUconn]

guys, there's nothing wrong with the circle dorms. They don't look nice, but they're functional. I lived in 1 for 4 years. Yes they are old and they fall apart, but they're easily fixed and really it always seemed comical to me. Like your sink falling off the wall. How funny is that. But that's niether here nor there. The fact is they give people shelter and they're not as bad to live in as they appear.

[SuperJon]

Those dorms don't attract the new students. I would be willing to bet that 50-75% of all incoming freshmen all living on East or back in the quads. Most of them aren't going to the hill or the circle anymore, and the only ones that are are the ones that couldn't get to the other two. We need nice dorms to get to 25,000.

[PeterParker]

I agree with SJ, the education landscape is changing, the consumer demographic is changing...the price tag that people are having to pay for on-campus education (for the $30K per year teacher or 40K management jobs) means that parents and students alike are going to demand more in return for their hard earned dinero, or they will just find alternate routes, kinda the personification of the free market principle that LU lauds in its distinctives (i.e. In state Community College for the pre-requisites because its cheaper and then transfer, or simply do online education, at some point the price component will force people who want to get the living-on-campus aspect of college to reconsider.) Identify your areas of weakness, draw from the input of your constituents and shore up the holes so that the consumer won't have fodder for objections when it comes time to land the recruit. Adapt, adopt and advance or get left out.

One can't just say anymore to the incoming students to "suck it up, you have it better than we did, etc." Education is becoming an increasingly competitve product (and increasingly costly at that, especially for those of us under 40. It stands to reason that some will not even have their own loans paid off for a handful of years before they are gearing up trying to figure how to send their own offspring to the wonderland of college--just read some of the exorbitant loan amounts people are taking out to get "edumacated" which qualify them for middle of the road jobs.)

Those institutions that can see the forest from the trees and who upgrade will weather the shift in demographics (also note that many analysts are projecting that the dwindling birth rate of Gen X-ers & Y-ers will create a smaller student population going to college in the future. The reasoning is that the Baby Boomer Generation focus on going to college essentially created a swell of a higher education boom...now whether those numbers play out that way, nonetheless, the colleges who offer the best product, can create the best college experience (after all you only get your 18-24 years once), can create a high academic brand equity (which is partially built by both the institutions practices and prestige and built on the backs of its alumni) for the best value and the most reasonable cost will win out, Christian or not. Increasingly, educational entities are finding themselves having to think and act like businesses, identify the market niche, market themselves, and listen to their consumer base in order to drive the organization forward.

[El Scorcho]

I think I've mentioned before that everything I've been told indicates the final plan is to get rid of housing on the circle completely and move most of the residence life over to East. I think the newly renovated quad-style dorms and Dorm 33 would stay, but the rest are probably fair game. Real estate on Main is at a premium and it makes too much sense to move the majority of housing to East so that can be used for new academic or administrative space.

[JDUB]

i stayed in the circle during 3 different cfaw's, and when i came to liberty i got in the quads. I didn't want to live on the circle because they were too raggedy. i thought that it was worth the extra money to not be in the circle.
like jon said, the circle doesn't attract students, and i think the only freshman that go there are the ones who can't afford the extra to go anywhere else.

[thepostman]

I think I've mentioned before that everything I've been told indicates the final plan is to get rid of housing on the circle completely and move most of the residence life over to East. I think the newly renovated quad-style dorms and Dorm 33 would stay, but the rest are probably fair game. Real estate on Main is at a premium and it makes too much sense to move the majority of housing to East so that can be used for new academic or administrative space.

hmnmm very interesting...

as for the circle dorms, i lived in them for 2 1/2 years, they are livable but not the best situation in the world to be in...I had fun and have some great memories, but I often wished the place was a bit nicer...plus the ceiling leaked all the time and this pipe in the bathroom busted twice flooding one of the rooms....sucked for them...and there room smelled for the rest of the year....and this happened first semester, sucked for them big time....they wanted to move elsewhere, but there was no room

[TDDance234]

I lived in 1 for 4 years.

Would that be THE dorm 1, LUconn?

[SuperJon]

Did you know there's no Dorm 24?

[TDDance234]

Yeah. I've always wondered what the story is behind that.

[El Scorcho]

Every building at LU has a number. The dorms were done sequentially, but the laundromat/RD apartment next to 33 actually got number 24 during that process. So while there is no "dorm 24", building 24 does exist.

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

[SuperJon]

You just ruined the fun.

[Rocketfan]

Every building at LU has a number. The dorms were done sequentially, but the laundromat/RD apartment next to 33 actually got number 24 during that process. So while there is no "dorm 24", building 24 does exist.

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

Did you just bust out GI Joe? Wow.

[PAmedic]

such denigration of the fond memories of my beloved dorm 12.

sniff, sniff

[TallyW]

One prank we'd pull on CFAW kids was telling them to meet up with some hot girls in dorm 24 from our sister dorm.... got rid of 'em for a while...

[ATrain]

Tally, sending CFAWs to the sister dorm? That is not how ladies should be treated...
We just stick CFAWs on a couch, give them some used copy of Halo or Halo2 that we bought at EBGames and tell them to have fun...it seems to work.

[qkslvrsrfrboy]

last cfaw we over heard our RA tell the cfaws at their meeting that if they got bored just go to room 402(our room) to hang out, so we figure if we werent there they wouldnt go there. we came back and there was like 10 just sitting in our room and they wouldnt leave, so we put in weekend at bernies to try amd drive them out.. it didnt work

[PAmedic]

did you try lighting a small fire?

JOKING

JOKING

JOKING