November 2, 2021

My Ph.D. dissertation was entitled "Restricted Space: The Urban Tenement and the American Literary Imagination." I have openly admitted that it was a convenient vehicle to get me to where I am at today.  No books or articles came out of that dissertation, but the ability to attach "Ph.D." to my name opened many doors for me, and I have always been very grateful. It's not that I disown the intellectual property in the dissertation; I simply set it aside to focus more on the immediate practical elements of education (whether teaching English, sociology and history; or identifying how to support less-privileged students to navigate higher education for the betterment of their lives). I just never thought the specifics of monolithic, unhealthy structures built by the powerful for the powerless would apply to my career.

However, today that is not the case.  Multiple outlets, including the Chronicle of Higher Education, are reporting about a proposed dormitory for University of California, Santa Barbara, that is mostly windowless and elephantine, at least from the outside.  The kicker in the story is that the billionaire donating the money for it demands these (his) specific plans. No, he is not Henry Potter, although there is a resemblance evident especially in the video accompanying this CNN story.  The building is something out of Jacob Riis' nightmares: 11 stories to house 4,500 students in single rooms, 94% of which will be windowless.  If all rooms are singles, parents of 4,230 future UCSB students, you have been forewarned.

In defense of the project, the building is projected to have fantastic amenities, which is the trend in higher education dormitory these days anyway.  Not wanting our students to live in dumps is admirable, but do we want that at the sacrifice of natural light? Our billionaire promotes artificial windows and lighting to the CNN reporter, but the image from the similarly funded and constructed dormitory at University of Michigan doesn't show that. Interestingly, graduate students live in those dorm rooms at U of M.  Picture a Doug Niedermeyer Resident Hall Director: "You are going to grad school at THE University of Michigan. You should be glad for anything you get!" 

"You never saw such a happy group of students," our billionaire says about the graduates living in this housing at The University of Michigan, which isn't a lie: graduate students are not often a happy bunch, and if you can't see them in their dark, dank caves, you really can say that you never saw them.

Thank goodness the actual building of this monstrosity will take a year or two. Quarantining or isolating in this dorm room, as many of us are requiring of students during COVID, would be equivalent to a prisoner being put in the hole.

If my dissertation opened many doors for me, this version of tenements is the opposite, as the building has just two entrances. I hope to God there are more fire exits, especially when Mrs. O'Leary's cow from the UCSB Campus Farm starts a fire in what the resigning architect says "would qualify as the eighth densest neighborhood on the planet."  Perhaps appropriate from the eighth densest billionaire on the planet. What, he can't be satisfied by going to space, perhaps taking Sigourney Weaver with him? He promotes the design as "a better mousetrap," so he might want to work on his metaphors, as well as his response to criticism: "Why would I let one crazy man change the design?"  Hmm? I think I have heard that before? Where? Maybe it was that guy who built the largest water slide?

Perhaps I should send UCSB a copy of my dissertation and highlight a few points. I could even help their enrollment.  Census-takers of the time dramatically under-counted the number of people living in tenements.  When they came through, generally, half of the building's occupants were at a factory working, unbeknownst to the clueless census takers. If they saw eight in a room, they should have probably counted sixteen. Add a bunch of night classes and UCSB can have 9,000 students living there! Our billionaire may know of what he speak: ""the whole idea is to get people closer together so they educate each other." "Tonight's lesson," goes the Residence Hall Manager "is about Rickets.  Who wants to start?  How about you, Lydia Deetz."

UCSB could appropriate Stephen Crane from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, advertising "Students in Munger Hall will blossom in a mud puddle." They have already wasted no time building the promotional campaign, calling the project "dormzilla."  History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man.¹ 

¹ "Godzilla." Blue Oyster Cult. Spectres. Columbia, 1977.