By Will Norton-Mosher
Three stories tall, off-white, full of students and the smell of pot, House Five is like every other dorm building in Stevenson-except that students aren’t the only ones who call it home.
Student residents now share the dorm building with administrators who conduct business on the ground floor.
Administrators temporarily moved into the dorm due to construction to seismically retrofit the Stevenson College offices that began July 1. The construction has also forced staff from the Linguistics, Philosophy, and History Departments into the yet-to-be-completed Humanities 1 building.
College administrative officer Jim Carter explained that the decision to move to House Five was born of necessity.
"There weren’t really any other options," Carter said. "We could have put this in the Humanities building, but we wanted to keep the college office as close to the students as possible."
So far, some students say that living with staff hasn’t been a problem.
Kaitlyn Moorehead, a first-year student, notes the convenience of sharing a building with the college office personnel."Whenever I have a problem I just walk upstairs," Moorehead said.
House Five resident Alex Eylar doesn’t mind the staff on the ground floor either.
"There are more people in the waiting room and the doors aren’t locked as much," Eylar said.
According to Carter, House Five was selected for the offices because it was the smallest building and would therefore interfere the least with students.
"Most of the staff is only here between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.," Carter said. "It’s usually pretty quiet."
According to Carter, the staff on the ground floor of House Five will be moving back to their offices by spring, when the construction is complete.
The earthquake retrofit is just one of many construction projects taking place on campus to either bring buildings up to code or expand existing facilities in order to fill the needs of a growing university.
The new Humanities building represents one of three new buildings that will become home to the Humanities department, specifically the History, History of Consciousness, American Studies, and Literature departments.
According to the financial resources manager David Symonik, all of the Humanities will move to the new building by Thanksgiving.
In addition to housing Humanities, the six-story building will have space for classrooms and offices for teaching assistants.
