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By Roy Rivenburg, Los Angeles Times | May 20, 2007
LOS ANGELES -- The rooms in this college dorm have no electricity, no running water, and ceilings that are just 11 inches high. But the residents don't mind. They're dead.
The mini-cemetery is part of a small but growing trend on college campuses.
This summer, Notre Dame will unveil a pair of limestone and brick mausoleums laced with full-body crypts selling for as much as $11,000.
And the Citadel military college in South Carolina is adding 400 urn niches to a carillon tower that holds one of the Western Hemisphere's biggest collections of Dutch bells.
The University of Southern California is also studying the idea of campus tombs for a proposed multifaith chapel.
Think of it as continuing ed for the dead -- or the ultimate college reunion.
In today's mobile society, some people feel more connected to their alma mater than to their hometown, said cemetery consultant Mel Malkoff, who oversees Chapman's columbarium and is working on similar projects with other schools.
"People look back on their college years and say, `Those were the best days of my life,' " Malkoff said. "Why not spend eternity there?"
Last edited by PeterParker on May 30th, 2007, 1:00 am, edited 1 time in total.
Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.--John Quincy Adams
Colleges Offering Campuses as Final Resting Places
Jay Paul for The New York Times
RICHMOND, Va. — Want to recapture those undergraduate years? Colleges and universities are offering the chance — for eternity.
Richmond’s columbarium has 3,000 niches, of which 100 have been sold since its completion in 2001.
For a few thousand dollars, the University of Richmond and a half-dozen other universities are giving alumni and faculty the opportunity to have their ashes maintained on campus in perpetuity.
Three more universities — Notre Dame, the Citadel and Hendrix College — are building similar memorials, known as columbaria.
“It seems really off the wall on first blush to most people,” said Richard W. Trollinger, who was involved in the creation of one at Centre College, a liberal arts college in Danville, Ky. “Why on earth would a university create a columbarium?”
The answer is simple, Mr. Trollinger and other college officials say. In an era when many people are highly mobile and do not settle in one place for long, a college can have a strong allure as a final resting place, they say. And officials point out that colleges have a special resonance for many people, who have forged life-long relationships as undergraduates.
“Returning to that place as a final resting place can be a very powerful notion,” said J. Timothy Cloyd, the president of Hendrix, a small liberal arts college in Conway, Ark.
For the universities, memorial walls can serve other purposes, although officials are often reluctant to talk about them. A columbarium, by building stronger bonds with alumni and their families, might lead eventually to substantial donations.
“What schools are looking to do is to get people to include them in their wills, in their estates, and this is a natural adjunct to that,” said Tim Westerbeck, a managing director of Lipman Hearne, a marketing firm that works with universities and other nonprofits. “The idea of people being buried on campus is the period at the end of the sentence, so to speak. It’s the final commitment.”
“I think schools are all about building deep affinity, just like a business needs to build customer loyalty,” Mr. Westerbeck added.
But at many institutions, sales for columbaria have been slow, perhaps in part because marketing tends to be subdued. Prices vary, ranging from $1,800 to over $3,000.
College officials say interested alumni or staff members — not university fund-raisers and consultants — came up with the idea of building columbaria on campuses...
Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.--John Quincy Adams
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