If you want to get a crash course on American culture and a sneak peek into the future generation, I recommend sending a kid off to college. I’ve been touring schools with my eldest daughter recently and our search for the right fit has taken us from San Diego to Binghamton We have toured 20 schools. All of them have been impressive – to say the least. From their physical facilities to the resources that extend beyond the lecture halls off campus, every college we visited offered higher learning that every other country in the world would be envious of. Now I (kinda) understand where the tuition goes and why college is so expensive.
The one place they have all failed miserably though has been with the design of their student housing. They’re plain ugly. It’s as if these schools purposely designed the housing to torture the kids and make them uncomfortable.
Recently, Charlie Munger, the billionaire partner of Warren Buffet donated a new massive dormitory to house 4000 students at The University of Santa Barbara in California. One of the conditions was that 94% of the rooms would have no windows. The design is horrendous. Mr. Munger believes that the windowless single occupancy rooms would be added motivation for the students to get outside and away from solitary confinement. It would be an experiment. I wonder if he starved his children to get them to eat their vegetables. Apparently, the design was so bad, that the architect on the university’s Design Review Committee quit in protest of the project.
At the end of the day, this building will get built because the person holding the purse strings always gets to decide. Thanks to his generous donation, generations of students will have the opportunity to live with no light or air.
Perhaps someone will figure out a way to solve this problem. I know that if it was designed well, and was more in line with the other resources their schools have to offer, they’d have a happier and more productive student body.
Let’s do this!
-Shaun