I’m pretty sure part of the social engineering of this design involves pumping in sedative gas, maybe in difference concentrations for each “house” to see what produces the best combination of stupor and marginal productivity. No ‘hotboxing’ required.
Stranger
I mean, they kinda are when they need to sleep. And they will all wake up in a lightless cave.
Yes, pre-pandemic, I worked in a large office building that was largely sealed from outdoors, much like this dorm. And it has an active HVAC system and both the system and human beings monitor the air, and when the CO2 got high in an area, someone would come by and fiddle with it. That happened often enough that I know that’s what the technicians were doing, because I got curious.
They used to turn the HVAC off at night, and even with much reduced occupancy, the air was noticeably “stuffy” before I went home.
So long as the power is on, and the HVAC system is working, I assume it can handle keeping the air okay. But if the HVAC goes off in the middle of the night, perhaps due to a power outage, I think the air could be pretty unpleasant. I am not an HVAC technician, but given the rareness of people suffocating in office buildings, I’ll grant that the kids are unlikely to all die in their sleep. But I think it could be really easy for them to be subjected to high enough levels of CO2 to cause health problems.
Who’s going to enroll at UC Santa Barbara that wants to sleep, eat, socialize, etc in a brutalist building? This building is going to be a preference for only a few students. Everyone else is not going to be there by choice. It’ll be a situation where privileged students find better accommodations and this dorm will be occupied by those unable to do so because of lack of connections or resources.
There are large hotels which are essentially the same from an HVAC perspective. They are essentially a sealed building with windows that don’t open. So I don’t expect that air circulation will be anything to worry about in a building with this design.
One thing to remember is that colleges are in competition for students. Colleges have generally moved away from tiny, cell-like dorm rooms and towards large, airy rooms because that’s what attracts students. If prospective students don’t like this dorm design, they will go to some other college with nice rooms (and a food court, rock wall, water park, etc.).
My take on it - its Charlie Munger’s money, the UC system can turn him down. But if this will allow more students to attend with lower room and board costs, lowering the total cost of a college education, I think its good. It won’t be ideal living circumstances for anyone, and it won’t be acceptable living standards for everyone - but I have a friend who is a community college professor who has students who live in their cars, in a Minnesota Winter. To those students, this looks like heaven
And when you have billions to donate, you can specify a dorm with windows. This is way better than using your billions to shoot yourself into space, elect an orange despot and his friends to higher office, or passing it to your kids.
(Edited: A car DOES have windows. That is less of a feature in 20 below than you’d think)
That is why you have backup generators.
I guess Munger didn’t talk to this student in his announced mini-survey of wildly enthusiastic prospective dorm residents. From USA Today:
“I am against this project due to its height and also the fact there are no windows to allow fresh air in for students,” said UCSB student Michael McConnell. “Young people do not alway smell good.* Fresh air is UNBELIEVABLY important for college students.”
While far from the only one, the dominant issue is or should be emergency egress in the event of fire, active shooter, terrorist attack etc.
“According to McFadden (the architect who resigned in protest), the committee approved the plan (which reportedly comes with a $1.5 billion price tag) without a vote and sans any consideration of any other proposals. The architect also noted that, if constructed, it would constitute the largest dormitory building in the world, ahead of the U.S. Naval Academy’s Bancroft Hall, which has a total of twenty-five entryways compared to the proposed building’s two.”
*Do tell.
Regardless of the amount Munger donates, he doesn’t have to make his contribution contingent upon rigid adherence to his blueprints. He could donate his $250 million and let experienced professionals decide whether windows in sleeping quarters are essential.
You keep using that word…
As mentioned upthread, the purpose of this design is to crush individuality and force people to get used to living under oppressive conditions. This is not conducive to teaching … anything. “Hyperbole” is not a synonym for “I don’t understand your perspective and so I dismiss it”. And a college that can be even sort of referred to as a “sleep away camp” is not a college worth attending.
hyperbole
See, no. Not hyperbole. I meant that exactly as I wrote it.
Once again, "Hyperbole” is not a synonym for “I don’t understand your perspective and so I dismiss it”.
He doesn’t have to. But he doesn’t have to donate anything at all either. And the UC system doesn’t have to accept it under his terms.
Imputing supervillain-level motives to someone without solid evidence is not something that needs to be taken seriously.
I disagree. Neither shooting yourself into space nor giving it to your kids hurts random strangers. They are both less destructive uses of your money than this. And it’s not as if he’s donating so much and this design is so efficient that it’s actually going to make college more affordable.
I don’t think he’s a super-villain. I think he believes that forcing kids to socialize with 63 random dorm-mates (because he knows that the 8-unit suites will make their occupants uncomfortable) is A GOOD THING. I think he’s misguided, not evil.
Ah, so you DO understand what hyperbole means.
Whatever, this discussion is pointless as neither of us will have to endure living in these conditions. Until these kids graduate, brainwashed that these conditions are acceptable and build tons of old folks homes like this to store the Boomers in their final days.
I think the best parallel I can think of in real life is that my school (Texas A&M) actually had four non air conditioned dorms (but heated) when I was there that dated from the 1920s, complete with communal bathrooms, etc… Apparently for October through about April, they were reasonably comfortable, but for most of the first month of the school year, and the last couple, they were hellishly unpleasant, and the students bailed to go socialize/study/etc… elsewhere. If the goal was to get those guys (they were all-male) to go be social elsewhere, it worked like gangbusters. Everyone knew guys from the non-air dorms. Conversely, the modular dorms (pre-fab concrete rooms with built-in bathrooms, like hotel rooms), were notorious for having people just “stealth”, and chill in their rooms, only emerging to eat or go to class. Most dorms were somewhere in between- only the mods had individual bathrooms, but all the rest were air conditioned, and had varying sized rooms.
As a former resident advisor, I’d be curious how they’d plan to handle a dorm of that size and design. One RA per “House” of 64 people? One per two “Houses”? What about resident directors? Something that size will need something more hierarchical than the typical one or two RA per floor, one RD per building. Also, how is that going to shake out in terms of student activities? Intramural teams by floor?
I do think the eight-person suites is a nice idea versus the more common two person rooms, or ones with suite bathrooms (two rooms share a bathroom, with 2 people in each room), but I’m not so sure about the density, lack of windows, etc…
I’m sure that city/county housing and building codes will trump a lot of Munger’s more odd architectural ideas- there will have to be more exits, wider hallways, and so on. They won’t care if Munger’s plans are followed to the letter- they’ll just deny the permits, until the design meets the standards.
People do not NEED to stay in these dorms if it will hurt them. It obviously isn’t a solution for everyone - but it may help solve the expensive housing issue for some students. Plenty of people live under far worse conditions.
And shooting yourself in space does hurt random strangers. Its a huge carbon load. And who knows what simply passing it to your kids does - who knows what those kids will choose to do with it. That’s as speculative as saying these dorms will hurt random strangers.
And again, if the UC system feels that this will hurt their students, they have a responsibility to turn down the money. Munger has NO responsibility to change the terms on a donation.
The city building codes should be the thing keeping buildings from actively harming random strangers. That’s what building codes are supposed to do.
Which is why office buildings have emergency generators that kick in during a power outage. And enough exits for fires. If this is built and is unsafe, that is a building code problem.
Neither of these is a particularly compelling argument.
The same money could be used for a more traditional dorm layout.
And “other people have it worse” is a terrible counter-argument. There are few (no?) cases where that actually bolsters a case.
Sure, and nobody denies that.
But people are saying he’s acting like an entitled, self-absorbed ass over it and I can’t see where they’re wrong about that.
There are more exits than the two entrances; the drawings I’ve seen show three stairwells on each side of the building for a total of eight exits/entrances. Still may not be enough for this many people in this much space.