When students arrived on campus for the spring 2024 semester, they were greeted by construction at every corner – in addition to the existing construction of the Chapel of St. Ignatius and Gayle and Tom Benson Jesuit Center and the new residence hall.
Construction outside of Bobet Hall, which has an opening in the ground and is entirely fenced in, is to create a chilled water flow from the main line to the new residence hall, according to chief operating officer and senior vice president of finance Carol Markowitz.
“The work was supposed to be completed before classes started, but due to various issues we’ve run into, we will be closing that hole up by the end of next week and deferring the completion of that work to a later time in the year,” she said.
Lucy Rhoades, a public health freshman, considers the construction outside of Bobet Hall a great inconvenience, as it has made walking around campus unnecessarily difficult for her.
Rhoades added that moving back to campus following winter break was also frustrating.
“The Uber driver didn’t know where to go, and I didn’t know where to tell her to go because I feel like every time I leave here and come back, different roads are blocked.”
This is a result of the dorm hall construction expanding its areal space.
Amid her struggle to navigate arrival on campus, Rhoades recalls immediately stepping into mud that covered her shoes and luggage. Instead of spending time in her dorm, she spent the first half hour on campus cleaning herself off.
Although Rhoades believes that the construction of the new dorms will be useful, as a current student, she finds it to be disheartening to see university funding be funneled into a dorm that most current students won’t end up seeing the inside of.
Rhoades said she would much rather see the funding go toward the current dorms that have issues like mold, elevator outages, and other deferred maintenance.
“I don’t understand why they won’t use the money that they clearly have to fix what we already have instead of building new things.”
Markowitz said that the Bobet Hall construction is not being paid for by student tuition or fees.
“This cost is part of the construction budget for the new residence hall, none of which is being paid directly by student tuition,” she said.
Carly LeBlanc, a freshman English major, shares similar sentiments regarding the ongoing construction. When she’s driving to campus, she finds herself having to guess the routes that are open and closed.
Because much of the space between the Freret St. parking garage and Buddig Hall are blocked off due to the ongoing dorm construction, moving in was a struggle for LeBlanc.
When describing the process she said, “Having to go back and forth as just one person and having to [navigate] through that to take the straight path walking was really inconvenient, tiring, and difficult.”
Both Rhoades and LeBlanc said that the beauty of the campus was one of the main reasons they enrolled at Loyola.
However, since then the campus has been overrun by ongoing construction, it lacks the look it had when they first toured.
To them, it’s unfair and unfortunate that now they’re paying to go here, and they don’t get to experience one of the things that influenced their decision to enroll.
Leblanc said, “It just sucks that the campus was so pretty before I got here, and it’s probably not going to look like that again until I’m gone.”
