Palli: Students must take advantage of community Nordenberg Hall promotes

The wait is over: Walking from Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall to the Litchfield Towers no longer requires going around Thackeray Hall or back to the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Bigelow Boulevard. More importantly, Mark A. Nordenberg Hall is complete. Nordenberg Hall is the new building at the corner of Fifth and Thackeray avenues. It is a modern, dormitory-style freshman housing facility with wireless Internet and air conditioning, among many other amenities. The building is designed with a lot of great features — a great location, sustainable design, indoor bike storage (finally!) and a layout that emphasizes community. But it has potentially fatal drawbacks, as well — a huge cost and unnecessary TVs in every dorm space. 

One of the most impressive features is the building’s environmental focus that will likely guarantee it LEED silver certification. LEED certification requires both that a building meet a certain set of rigid standards and also that it score a certain amount of points in a flexible scoring system that rates buildings out of 100 points with six bonus points available. The standards include a 20 percent reduction in water use and storage and collection of recyclables. Categories in the points system include on-site renewable energy and use of recycled materials for construction. 

In this system, a rating between 50 and 59 points will confer a silver certification. The expectation of a silver certification indicates that Pitt could have done better, but it is nonetheless an achievement. Though Pitt may have some measures to take in becoming a truly green campus — such as not overheating buildings and watering grass during the day — this is a huge step in the right direction. Hopefully the Pitt administration will keep environmental priorities in mind during future construction projects.

More importantly, there is an emphasis placed on community in the layout of the building. A plethora of evidence exists that students perform better when they have a sense of belonging. Dean of Students Kathy Humphrey told the Post-Gazette that retention rates between freshman and sophomore year are higher for students who feel they are part of a community and that these students generally have more success at Pitt. Hence, fostering dorm-based communities in the right ways should be the priority when designing a new dormitory.

But the layout of the architecture isn’t the only thing that contributes to creating a community. Senior Mark Tumblin, a former RA, said, “From what I’ve seen, the most important factor in having a good floor community is the personalities of those on the floor and how well they get along … I think it’s more helpful to view communal space as just a bundle of potential, as opposed to always thinking of a lounge as a bonus.” It doesn’t just matter whether the space exists: It has to be used properly.

The televisions in each room, in addition to costing lots of money, will likely work against the purpose of creating community. 

There is no doubt that some students might watch TV together and use it as a jumping-off point for building connections, but others will do just the opposite and sit in their own rooms watching their own televisions. Critically, even the students who are able to build connections would have done just as well with TVs in common areas instead of hidden away in dorm rooms. Though it seems like a modern, smart thing to do, these TVs stand as the result of a major blunder. Regardless, with the right RAs and students, a community will flourish.

With the wrong students, Nordenberg Hall may just turn out to be an overhyped, expensive hotel. The University spent $59 million on construction. This means that Pitt spent almost 24 percent above the national average of $68,106 per student — a total of $9.13 million more than the average school would have spent for a dormitory holding the same number of students. For that much money, the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences could bestow 56 full-tuition scholarships each year for the next ten years. 

It is up to the group at Nordenberg Hall to take advantage of their edge in housing, deny the pull of their anti-social flatscreens and create a vibrant community.