A panel tasked with reviewing the feasibility of the proposed giant Munger Hall at UCSB has concluded that several major changes must be made to the project in order for it to be fit for students.
The Academic Senate Munger Hall Review Panel released its findings this week in a 202-page report.
The panel, made up of 13 faculty experts, outside stakeholders and industry leaders, received a report on recommendations to Munger Hall’s plans, suggesting several changes to the project’s fundamental design.
The panel presented its findings to the Executive Council for the UCSB Division of the Academic Senate as part of the full report.
The panel concluded “that key design modifications are needed to recommend the project move forward. Research and analysis weighed by this panel reveal significant health and safety risks that are predictable enough, probable enough, and consequential enough that it would be unwise for UCSB to proceed without significant modifications to the design.”
The university has faced a housing crisis for several years that was exacerbated in 2015 when the state mandated a 5,000-student enrollment increase without providing funds to house the additional students, the report said.
Billionaire Charlie Munger donated $200 million in seed money for what was initially a 4,500-bed, 11-story housing project as part of the university’s Long Range Development Plan.
The university has offered tours to the public of the building’s mock-up, which includes several elements that the panel suggested changing, such as the communal kitchen and bedroom lights designed to imitate windows.
The proposed design for Munger Hall is a 3-acre, nine-story-tall project designed to house 3,500 students.
The design has caused controversy and prompted criticism from students and the public, who raised concerns about the small and windowless bedrooms, windowless suites, overcrowding, lack of a dining hall, potential for COVID-19 spikes, and safety during emergencies and evacuations.
In response to criticism, the university held an Academic Senate Town Hall Meeting on Nov. 15 to consider input from “campus stakeholders” to discuss the building’s plan and possible recommendations for change.
The panel determined five key changes were required for the project to move forward:
— Add operable windows to each multi-bedroom suite, and to as many bedrooms as possible.
— Increase the size of each single bedroom to match or exceed existing on-campus singles.
— Reduce the building massing.
— Reduce the population density.
— Add cooking appliances to each suite kitchenette.
One of the additional areas observed in the review was the building’s impact on students’ mental health.
Panel members Turi Honegger, clinical director and psychologist for UCSB Counseling & Psychological Services, and Nancy Collins, a professor for UCSB Psychological and Brain Sciences, chair of the UCSB Human Subjects Research Committee and a UCSB parent, wrote a report about the social and psychological considerations of the project’s plan.
“The small size of Munger Hall bedrooms, the minimum 70 square feet allowable by building code, raises serious concerns, particularly in light of their windowless nature,” according to the report. “We are aware of no precedent for windowless bedrooms that are so small — all examples provided by the project team were considerably larger than 70 square feet.”
Honegger and Collins suggested several potential design solutions that would improve the mental health of the students’ living environment, such as increasing the bedroom size and reducing the capacity of rooms in a suite, which could be accomplished by eliminating the communal kitchen to make more space for the bedrooms.
They stated that students would prefer a dining hall to a kitchen, and that a communal kitchen would likely contribute to “disharmony” in the living area.
“It is unrealistic to expect students to purchase, transport, store groceries (and supplies) needed to cook most of their meals or that they have the time or desire to do so,” the report stated.
Other suggestions included adding a parking structure to the building, and reducing or eliminating unnecessary amenities in the building — such as the movie theater and demonstration kitchen that were in the mock-up — that would hike up the cost of housing in the building.
The report also included concerns raised by the university faculty:
— The effect of small, windowless bedrooms on mental and physical health.
— The effect of high population density on student well-being and local infrastructure.
— Transmission of COVID-19 and other infectious diseases.
— Safety and evacuation during emergencies.
— Environmental impact, sustainability, and climate change concerns.
— Dining options and lack of a dining hall.
— Project review process that lacked the transparency and substantive input expected from campus projects.
— The degree of donor control over the design, particularly in light of the donor’s reported contribution.
