After a year of construction that transformed Fauver Field from a grassy slope into a noisy worksite and finally into two large buildings, the Fauver dorms opened on Monday for the Fall 2005 semester.
Of the two dorms built on Fauver Field, one houses freshmen and the other houses groups of juniors and seniors. The Fauver freshmen dorm joins the renovated Clark dorm as a newer, exclusively freshmen dorm. Most of the rooms are doubles and similar in size to those in Clark Hall. They are furnished with the usual first year provisions: beds, desks, chairs, dressers, and bookshelves. Fauver also offers laundry facilities, vending machines, comfortable courtyards and state-of-the-art lounges.
“The dorm and the lounge look great, and I don’t think many dorms have big screen TVs in the lounge,” said David Zeng ’09. “It’s very modern day.”
The upperclass Fauver dorms are made up of mostly five-person suites. Each unit includes one kitchen, one bathroom, a common space and five bedrooms.
“Fauver- It’s like Holiday Inn Wesleyan,” said Emily Umhoefer ’08, a Resident Advisor in nearby Clark Hall.
Another benefit of living in the Fauver dorms is the fact that they are in the center of campus. A short walk from the Hewitt, Nicholson, WestCo, and Clark dorms, Fauver is also within a few minutes from MoCon, WesShop, Olin Library, Freeman Athletic Center, the Science Center, and the soon-to-be-closed Davenport Campus Center.
“We’re in a pretty good location,” said Iliana Garcia ’09 “And I haven’t seen other rooms, but I heard that [the Fauver rooms] are big compared to other dorms.”
Last year, the construction of the Fauver dorms received mixed reactions from the student body. Some students liked the idea of allowing more upperclassmen to live close to the heart of campus. Others did not like the idea that Fauver would essentially replace the In-Town residences, and still others complained about the construction noise.
Now, most of the new residents in Fauver said they were pleased with their housing so far. Nearly 160 freshmen moved into their Fauver residence this past week.
“We have the best dorm,” said Lauren Barth ’09. “It smells good, the doors are working, and the big wall of windows is pretty cool.”
The erection of the Fauver dorms is part of a ten-year plan at Wesleyan that began with last year’s opening of the Center for Film Studies, followed by the unveiling of the large addition the Freeman Athletic Center. Currently, the main campus construction project is the demolition of the old alumni gym near North College, where the Suzanne Lemberg Usdan University Center is scheduled to open in the fall of 2007. Wesleyan has set up an online camera at http://www.wesleyan.edu/masterplan/univcenter.html where students, parents, and alumni can monitor the progress of this new building.
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