A better plan for summer storage

Of course, we can't knock down Wilson while Butler is still mostly unavailable, so I will refrain from calls to extirpate the eyesore that is my residential college. But I did get an eye-opening experience recently that has prompted me to make a policy recommendation to our over-advised administration: please do something about student summer storage.

I'm living in a quad next year - thankfully facing Prospect House, not the churned-up gravel-strewn mess on view out my current window - and my roommates and I were thinking about couches. Those couches would cost $75 each to put in storage over the summer. That's more than half the price of a new couch. I know it's crass to complain about these minimal fees when the University is funding a substantial financial aid program, but I'm in sticker shock. And I have a bully-pulpit, which I am now using (in the best traditions of the free press, of course.)

Why, exactly, we need a Lewis Center for the Arts is beyond me. How about the Lewis Center for Student Summer Storage? Infinitely more practical, of far greater benefit to the entire undergraduate body and in high demand at the moment. For the arts, we already have McCarter Theatre, the theater in Frist Campus Center, Richardson, Theatre Intime at Murray-Dodge, the Chapel (for things like the Chapel Choir) and the current arts complex at 185 Nassau Street. How about this: Put up a big warehouse, make it look like Dillon, not Wilson, and use it as an arts gallery during the school year. Then we can stuff it with futons and armchairs in the summer months, when our budding Gaugins leave for Polynesia and those yards of unused space will be available. Alternatively, we could install storage facilities in Dillon Court. I saw the diorama in Firestone; I know there are undeveloped lots on this campus. If more space on campus is required for summer storage, I think it can be found.

Practically speaking, most students on this campus have furniture that they use on campus, and they need someplace to put it over the summer. I realize that leaving this furniture in our rooms could be problematic, because (I hope) the rooms get cleaned over the summer, so there needs to be someplace else to put it. I think it would be very convenient to have everyone just move their furniture at the end of the year into next year's housing, but I concede the logistical problems.

The current summer storage option is generous in that it includes pick-up and delivery. Therefore, employees need to be paid, student or otherwise. Further, there is probably limited space at wherever our extra bookcases go for June, July and August, so we need to enforce efficiency. If we could all store an unlimited quantity of furniture, there's a problem that we might do so. Charging money is an efficient way of encouraging students to ferry large boxes and footlockers home every summer, instead of dumping these on the storage agency.

So why not charge a flat fee of, say, $15 for one fouton and a chair, or a three-seater couch? Some reasonable limit could be imposed. This way, those students who do have furniture would have to contribute something to the cost of storing it, and those who don't could get off scot-free. After the basic storage limit, prices could start to rise. At $40 hopefully they would end. This would still encourage undergraduates to practice economy in their furniture plans, but recognize the reality that the vast majority of us own furniture, and we need a place to put it over the summer. And the increase in storage might not even require the construction of a new facility.

These opinion pages routinely chastise the University administration for the lackluster performance of its bureaucracies and agencies. I'll get on their case in two years' time, when we can start the demolition work on Wilson. Expect full architectural renderings to appear in these pages. But my college can't be redesigned yet; the summer storage policy can.