A special review committee formulated by UC Santa Barbara’s Faculty Senate released a 200-page report scorching Chancellor Henry Yang’s plans to build a nine-story mega-dorm capable of housing 3,500 students. After five months of review, the panel concluded that Munger Hall — as currently proposed — posed “significant safety risks that are predictable enough, probable enough, and consequential enough that it would be unwise for UCSB to proceed without significant modification to the design.”
The panel expressed serious concerns about the mental-health consequences of packing so many students into such small rooms, most of which would have no windows, natural light, or fresh air. The panelists acknowledged the dire need for additional student housing that Munger Hall — named after campus benefactor, billionaire, and amateur architect Charles Munger, who designed the dorm — would address. They insisted, however, that the project needed to be changed in five key ways before it could be deemed acceptable:
- “Operable windows” needed to be added to each multi-bedroom suite, the panel stated, taking vehement exception with amateur architect Munger’s proposal to replace interior windows with electric facsimiles programmed to replicate the intensity, brightness, and warmth of natural light.
- They urged Yang and his architectural team to increase the size of each bedroom “to match or exceed” that of existing on-campus single bedrooms.
- They insisted he reduce the size and mass of the building.
- They also called for a reduction of the population density.
- And lastly, they insisted that every suite come equipped with cooking appliances and a kitchenette.
As proposed, Munger Hall would offer several large and sprawling kitchen areas — equipped with multiple stoves and refrigerators — where a multitude of students could congregate and cook at the same time. Based on survey responses from hundreds of students who toured the display model of a Munger Hall floor, the panel concluded Munger’s plans for cooking were impractical in the extreme. For starters, they found, it failed to address such basic issues such as “cleanliness, maintenance, and theft.”