In years past, the anticipation of receiving first-year dorm assignments – complete with trembling fingers and racing heart beat – often ended in despair with two dreaded words: Brewster Hall.

With its inconvenient location (far down a hill from campus, past a busy street and adjacent to Interstate 81) and its plethora of tiny open doubles and study carrels for students’ desks and computers, Brewster Hall remained the least preferred residence hall for many students.

Beginning May 10, though, summer construction crews worked to renovate Brewster Hall, replacing the small open doubles and study carrels with cushy four-person suites and a lounge. Each floor also has an additional bathroom, bamboo wood lobby walls, and new black and grey carpeting. Its partner-in-crime and adjacent residence hall, Boland Hall, underwent no renovations.

‘It’s a better living environment,’ said Kunjan Divatia, a junior biology major and resident adviser in Brewster Hall, who lived there his freshman year. ‘You feel like you want to be here.’

For the past several years, Brewster Hall remained one of the only residence halls on campus co-ed by floor, partially because each of its 12 floors contained only one bathroom. But with the newly built additional bathroom, each floor can now be co-ed by room.

The gray-and-white tiled bathrooms are situated next to the older brown-and-white windowless bathrooms. The new restrooms offer dark blue ceramic counter space and huge windows overlooking a nearby parking garage,

‘The new bathrooms are gorgeous,’ said Allison Mac, a junior broadcast journalism major and resident adviser on the eighth floor of Brewster Hall. ‘I’m really excited about it.’

The women’s bathrooms on each floor remain closed indefinitely during the freshman move-in because of problems with plumbing, Mac said.

The elevators still open to a floor lobby, which formerly acted as a lounge full of couches and a television. Now the wood-paneled lobby contains only a water fountain and a small wooden bench. A windowed wall separates the lounge in the shorter wing of the floor, which now contains a mounted television.

Several of the renovated rooms now have wooden floors and bunk beds, Mac said.

Instead of the archaic keyhole locks, the doors of the four suites in the shorter wing of Brewster Hall now have ID security locks, a la hotels or motels. Some of the doors in the longer wing also have these new locks.

‘I think it’s wonderful,’ said Tremayne Robertson, resident director of Brewster and Boland Halls. ‘It’s very student-centered. It has a fresh and vibrant feel for students. I hope they like it.’

But only the sweet smell of the pale green wall paint alerts freshman residents to the newness, and welcome overhaul, of their digs.

‘I had no idea really that anything was done,’ said Dana Mascollo, an undecided freshman in The College of Arts and Sciences and a Brewster Hall resident. ‘It smells new. It looks really pretty.’

Published on August 29, 2004 at 12:00 pm