Zachary Noyce | Leaping across the Schuylkill

Penn has been facing nothing short of a housing crisis for years now. In spite of all the faithful converts to off-campus housing options, the fact that Penn doesn't have the space to accommodate its students in College Houses means too many have been forced converts.

But solving the current housing crisis is hardly an easy task. Penn has an undergraduate student population of around 10,000 and nearly as many graduate students. With College Houses operating at capacity, unless Penn puts sleeping cots in the Van Pelt stacks or Steiny-D alleys, the University's current facilities can't resolve the issue.

Penn also isn't as spacious as Cornell. We can't just fill in a gorge and plop a building there. For all the housing needs we have at Penn, the University simply doesn't have sufficient space to build all the dorms it needs.

The University clearly needs to come up with a solution. As we all know, there are all kinds of plans in the works for our Drexel takeover . er, uh . eastward expansion. And with a $3.5 billion price tag, there had sure better be some plans on the table.

Surprisingly, for all the messianic promises about the Postal Lands transforming Penn into a utopian community of academic achievement, there's very little in the proposal to address the housing issue.

The only student housing proposal you'll see in Penn's plan is a sort of Quad Part Deux that could pop up around Hill Field sometime between now and when we send our kids to Penn. But even that brand-spanking new College House will only house about 350 more students.

Of course, Penn could waste the last 24 acres it can ever acquire in West Philly on more T-cell- and prison-inspired dorms - but that doesn't seem like a good idea either.

What's a University to do?

Let's take on-campus housing off campus.

Penn should hop the Schuylkill and make a College House in Center City, which would go a long way toward fulfilling Penn's goal of connecting with downtown. Coupled with the University plans to revitalize walkways across the Schuylkill, a Center City College House would encourage students to go into the city and become the crown jewel in the University's efforts to "engage locally."

Jeff Cohen is a third-year student in the Medical School who already lives in Center City. "I love living downtown," he told me. "There's always something to do, and it's a nice change of pace from West Philly."

Certainly there are other students who would like a change of pace. "If it was well-publicized, I think a lot of grad students would be interested," said Wenny Lin, a fifth year doctoral student.

Recently, it seems that Penn administrators have decided they're sick of being our landlords. The University handed some Penn Design students a box of green and brown Legos - and we got the Hub.

They asked law students if they would be willing to walk a whole block from their apartment to get to a Starbuck's - and when they answered a resounding "no," we got Domus and everyone's favorite corporate coffee shop on consecutive 34th Street corners.

After observing that the walk from Rodin to FroGro was just too long for some students, Penn saw no choice but to build the Radian. (Get it? There's an angle. Call it the Degree; this isn't trigonometry.)

Unreasonable rents aside, these developments are a far cry from providing housing for Penn students. A more appropriate focus would be to expand University housing options. There are myriad advantages to University-provided housing - computer labs, RAs and security guards to name a few.

I admit my real estate expertise is pretty much limited to having seen Field of Dreams about a dozen times: If Penn builds it, students will come. I'm sure that the University wouldn't have any trouble finding upperclassmen and graduate students who would love to live in a Center City dorm.

Building is expensive and therein lies another great beauty about a Center City dorm. The University could buy and renovate an existing structure instead of footing yet another outrageous construction bill.

On a good day, a shuttle might take students from their Center City digs to Penn in the time that other students wait for an elevator in the high rises.

Maybe administrators are just so sick of us whining about everything from grading curves to gym schedules. So now, they don't want to deal with the fire alarms we set off because we thought bacon needed to cook for a half hour on each side. I hope that's not the case.

After all, Penn administrators take a lot of pride in having us fill their classrooms.

They should take just as much pride in having us sleep on their twin-extra-long plastic mattresses every night.

Zachary Noyce is a College junior from Salt Lake City, Utah. His e-mail is noyce@dailypennsylvanian.com. The Stormin' Mormon appears Mondays.

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