Du Bois residents push for renovations

When College freshmen Everett Benjamin and Ryan Jobson applied for housing as incoming students, they listed the same top three preferences: DuBois College House, DuBois and DuBois.

Now the two roommates and Political Co-chairs of UMOJA - the umbrella organization for student groups of the African Diaspora - are fighting to keep DuBois at the top of other students' lists by pushing for renovations of the 36-year-old college house.

At an open forum last night organized by the Penn chapter of the NAACP at DuBois, students expressed concerns about the lack of funding that has been allocated toward renovating the building, especially in comparison to what other college houses - particularly the high rises - have received.

DuBois has received $1.8 million in the last five years for smaller renovations like painting walls and upgrading sprinkler systems, Business Services spokeswoman Barbara Lea-Kruger wrote in an e-mail.

An additional $1 million will be spent this summer on improvements like replacing the dumbwaiter, updating the laundry room and upgrading faculty and staff apartments, she added.

But a couple million is small compared to the approximately $106 million that will be given to the three high rises over four years or the roughly $112 million given to the Quadrangle, said Wharton and College junior Lisa Zhu, United Minorities Council chairwoman and Daily Pennsylvanian columnist. It is also lower than the $11 million slated for renovations to Gregory, King's Court English and Hill College Houses, the other low rises.

"It brings up an issue of equity," she said.

Vice President of Facilities and Real Estate Anne Papageorge couldn't confirm these exact statistics, but she did point out that less money is allocated to low rises in general because they are smaller.

Papageorge also explained that the Quad and high rises were slated to be the first college houses to undergo renovations because they serve larger student populations. At the meeting last night, representatives from Business Services announced that DuBois will face a full-scale renovation in 2010, after the high-rise project is finished.

The open forum and the commitment to a future renovation are a beginning, said Benjamin, but they are long overdue.

"The positive thing is that there's attention being given, which is a testament to students being vocal about it," he said. "But there's still frustration."

One of those frustrations, Jobson said, is that "we're paying the same amount in rent money as anyone in the high rises, but there's a very different standard."

That discrepancy in standards will be captured on film by a project proposed by the Penn chapter of the NAACP to photograph rooms in DuBois compared to rooms in other college houses.

What the photos will document in DuBois are windows lacking screens, dilapidated furniture and "carpeting [that] has obviously been the same since it opened," Jobson said.

Given the spirit in which DuBois was officially created in 1972, both Jobson and Benjamin feel the administration has not done enough to encourage the development of its reputation as an on-campus institution for diversity.

"There needs to be a statement made not just verbally but monetarily," added Benjamin.

As "easily the most diverse house on campus," said Jobson, "[House Dean Patricia Williams] calls it the United Nations of the University of Pennsylvania."

*This article was edited at 7:47 p.m. on Tuesday, April 2. We incorrectly stated that $187 million will be spent on the high rises over the next four years; that is the amount that has been spent on them since they were first constructed.

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