After much discussion and deliberation, it has been decided that there will be no windows in the classrooms of the Classroom Building that will be built next to University Hall.
The building will hold four classrooms and a lecture hall that will hold around 225 people.
The original plan consisted of floor to ceiling windows on the exterior wall of the lecture hall. However, faculty opposed the plans to include these windows in the room.
Former Student Government Chief of Staff Spencer Brannon said he strongly supported windows in the lecture hall.
Brannon said that there were three specific concerns raised by faculty.
"Cost was one, they would cost around 26,000 dollars but on an 18 million dollar project. What is that in the scheme of things? And the second one was that if you have windows, maybe the sun would come in and put a glare on the boards,” Brannon said. “[The building] is not facing the sun, and they’d be using a special type of glass, they arranged the boards and the location of the windows so it wouldn’t happen. And the third one was that having windows would distract students. [The architect and the committee] worked out a compromised proposal so you couldn’t see out the windows.”
Faculty President Dan Krane addressed the argument of cost.
“In the scale of the building, [The cost of the windows] seems small, but 27,000 dollars in any scale, that’s a fair bit of money. I think that money could be better spent," Krane said.
Krane mentioned using that money to buy electronics or to save it to lessen any raise in tuition costs for students. He also stated that the issue wasn’t with glare, as much as light pollution, which would diminish the ability to use projection in the room. Blinds were also an option to control incoming light, but Krane said he believes that the possibility of their malfunction could further disrupt learning in the space with potential repairs.
Brannon said that there were studies done weighing the benefits and downsides of windows in classrooms. He said that these studies showed that students in classrooms with windows had a 25 percent increase in test scores.
Krane said he did not believe those studies were relevant to the current issue.
“They do not pertain to college level education. They’re talking about students that need to be in these spaces for many hours. [I do not think that] a student would be captive in one of these rooms for more than two hours and I don’t think students with that level of maturity will be impaired from being closed off from natural light,” Krane said.
Brannon said that to change the plans at this stage would be very costly and any chance to do so would be “improbable”.
The building is planned to hold not only new classrooms, but also the Math and Writing Centers, University College and more facilities.
Groundbreaking for the new building is set for October.
