By Rick Peterson
Lawrence Today magazine, Spring 2004
When
the hearing is held to determine the validity of the expression “poetic
justice,” Jessie Lepak, ’05, could very well be the defense team’s
star witness.
A two-year resident of Ormsby Hall, Lepak spent last year living in the room
closest to the construction site on which Hiett
Hall, the college’s newest
addition to residence life, was gradually taking shape.
For most of that year, Lepak had little need for an alarm clock. The early
morning cacophony of pilings being driven for footings, the roar of diesel-engine
dump trucks and high-boom cranes outside her window, and the bang-clang of
workers’ hammers and shovels provided more than adequate, if unwanted,
wake-up warnings.
All that sleep deprivation was forgiven and the vibrating floors and steady
stream of dust forgotten, however, when Lepak struck the housing lottery
jackpot last spring. Randomly chosen by computer, she drew a housing number
that guaranteed
her one of the coveted addresses in Hiett Hall for the 2003-04 academic year.
Poetic justice? Case dismissed.
As early reviews of the new residence hall go, Lepak’s description is
as enthusiastic as it is succinct: “It’s perfect!”
"Everyone feels as if it’s a hotel,” says the junior music
education major from Hales Corners, whose inconvenience of a year ago has been
rewarded
with a east-facing, fourth-floor suite that overlooks Briggs and Science Halls.
"The rooms are huge, the furniture is beautiful, and the views of the river
are great. There are lights in the closets, heat lamps in the bathroom, and
track lighting — with dimmers — in the rooms. It feels like a home,
not a dorm room. It’s all quite amazing.”
A feng shui thing
Following almost a year and a half of construction, the much-anticipated
welcome mat was laid out in front of Hiett Hall last September for 183 lucky
students.
The largest living space on campus — 14 beds larger than Trever Hall — and
the first new residence hall since Kohler was built in 1967, Hiett’s
L-shaped design features 63 living quarters, divided among 11 single rooms
(eight of which are occupied by residence life advisors), 33 four-person suites,
and 19 two-person suites. Each suite has its own bathroom and a common living
space.
Formally dedicated in October 2003, the building is named in honor of Stanley
and Clara Hiett, the parents of Lawrence trustee Kim Hiett Jordan, ’58,
whose generous $8 million gift made the building’s construction possible.
While “residence hall” and “posh” are traditionally
mutually exclusive terms, the $15.5 million, 79,500-square-foot, attention-grabbing
addition to the campus landscape is clearly the exception.
In addition to virtually all suite-style living quarters on the building’s
two “wings,” three of Hiett’s four floors have large central
kitchen areas, complete with refrigerator, stove, two microwave ovens,
dishwasher, and a sink. A wall of windows washes each floor’s spacious furnished
lounge — the one on the
fourth floor has a fireplace — in natural
light, providing magnificent views of the Fox River and the setting sun. A
large separate room is also available on each floor for quiet or group study.
Because the building is set into the bank of the Fox River, the entrance
on the campus side is at the third-floor level.
“We’re basically living at the Ritz-Carleton,” says Alison
Vandenberg, ’05, an English major from Sheboygan, whose hotel
analogy avoided the more often-named Hyatt reference. “We’re getting
pretty spoiled. I don’t know if it has even hit me yet, but it is definitely
nice not having to walk down the hallway to a community bathroom.”
The size and layout of the suites have enabled students to put some “Trading
Spaces”-inspired
creativity to work. In Zach Brown’s fourth-floor
quad suite, all four beds were moved into one bedroom and the second
bedroom converted into the suite’s community living room, complete with two oversized
chairs, a love seat, a couch, television set, stereo, bookcase, and two refrigerators.
"We’ve had lots of people tell us that our living room is the most
comfortable room on this entire campus,” says Brown, a junior
mathematics-economics major from Beverly, West Virginia. “By itself,
our living room is virtually the same size as my entire room in Colman Hall
two
years ago. The environment in
Hiett works on your psyche. When I’m in my room, I feel good. I think, ‘man,
this is awesome.’ It’s kind of a feng shui thing.”
Living and learning together
Part of the credit for the ooohs and aaaahs Hiett Hall has generated goes
to the students themselves, whose input was sought early and often throughout
the building’s planning process. They made it clear they wanted more
personal living space to accommodate all their belongings, without losing the
experience of residential living with a roommate. But Hiett Hall is more than
just a modern
dormitory with bigger rooms, well-appointed kitchens, and private bathrooms.
Dean of Students Nancy Truesdell sees Hiett as a concrete reaffirmation of
the centrality of the college’s residential mission.
“Hiett Hall affirms the importance of students living, studying, changing,
and growing together,” Truesdell says. “It acknowledges that a
great deal of one’s college education at a place like Lawrence comes
from shared experiences that occur outside the classroom, lab, or studio. A
beautiful,
new state-of-the-art residence hall like Hiett challenges us to think about
ways we can improve the other living spaces on campus so that students can
gain the most from their total Lawrence education.”
The centrally located lounge and kitchen areas are proving to be popular
gathering spots for many of those shared experiences. On any given night,
a stroll through
the building might reveal students holding “pizza picnics” on the
floor; a group partaking in the weekly ritual of “The West Wing”;
a dozen Emeril-wannabes collaborating on a special community dinner; members
of the Cookie of the Month Club whipping up a batch of their latest creation,
which, after sampling, they generously leave out on the counter for community
consumption; or Jessie Lepak leading a session of her “Super 7s,” a
thrice-weekly open-invitation exercise workout to offset the effects of all
those cookies.
"We wanted to develop a space in which students could have new and different
living experiences while still providing the type of environment that students
here have come to enjoy,” says Amy Uecke, associate dean of students
for residential life. “The
common spaces in Hiett Hall have done a wonderful job of creating exactly that
kind of environment
.
“Students living together for four or five years, learning from one another,
and developing life skills has been, and will continue to be, a big part of
the Lawrence difference,” Uecke adds. “With the opening of Hiett
Hall, we have created a new state-of-the-art laboratory for these experiences
to bloom and grow.”
Keeping it nice
For Jacques Hacquebord, the addition of Hiett
Hall to the campus housing options has “raised the bar considerably.” But that higher bar applies
to the students who live there as well.
"It’s both a privilege and a responsibility to be among the first
group of students to live in Hiett,” says Hacquebord, ’04, a biology
major from Waunakee and the current LUCC president.
"The way you may have acted in other dorms isn’t acceptable here.
In Hiett, you want to be more respectful of things and act more responsibly.
This building
says a lot for the administration when it comes to treating students as adults.
You certainly want to act like an adult if the administration is going to treat
you like one.”
“It’s an honor to live there,” adds Vandenberg. “As
the first residents of Hiett, we’re helping to build it. We have the
responsibility of keeping it as nice as possible so that next year’s
residents can enjoy it as much as we are.”
Rising from within 70 feet of the edge of the Fox River and towering over
the tennis courts, the glass and cream-brick building crowned with an all-copper
roof creates an aesthetically striking first impression for campus visitors
arriving from the west. But more important than the imprint it leaves on
the
eyes is the one it leaves on the students who live in it.
"Any way you look at it, Hiett Hall is a wonderful and beautiful addition
to the Lawrence campus,” Dean Truesdell says. “It
has breathed new life into the residential experience for the campus as a whole
and is clearly meeting student needs in a grand way. I am confident we will
continue to feel its positive impact for many years to come.”
Sidebar: What's not to like?