Hopkins is undergoing much change with the construction of the Charles Village Project and new security measures. With new housing, stores and security concerns, designs are in place to have students gravitate closer to Homewood campus and away from the streets of Charles Village. Students need to take notice of how all this change will affect them and the future of their University, since such change will permanently shake up how students live and socialize.
The new security measures outlined by President Brody and Dean Burger are absolutely necessary: Hopkins is giving up on trying to make the area appear safe and is taking matters into its own hand with measures such as cameras, foot patrols and cooperation with area landlords. The construction of new student housing is crucial to the plan - the administration believes it will contribute to long-term security.
Allowing students to live closer to the safety of Homewood does provide a near final solution to security. Yet, M. Matean Aziz, a junior living in a row house on North Calvert Street, believes that it could also provide a death blow to a staple of Hopkins life: the option of living in Charles Village. Though the construction of "sufficient housing so that any undergraduate student who desires to live in a university building can do so" sounds attractive when announced by Brody, the reality will prove the death of off campus living.
More than that, the University may undermine its own goal of "stability [and] livability of the nearby neighborhoods." Although area residents complain about student noise and parties, Charles Village knows that students are indispensable to the area economy and community. By creating incentives for students to move closer to campus, Hopkins is indirectly seizing control of the fate of Charles Village. This is in addition to Hopkins assuming control of student housing concerns. Students will not only lose out on attractive experiences off campus, but apartment buildings and row houses will suffer from a drop in demand, stripping away property value.
All of this concerns student social life too. As more students opt to live on campus, more and more students will follow their friends and decide against living off campus. But what will be the character of an on-campus social life? As it is now, students yearn for fresh social air, with many students seeking out opportunities for socializing off campus, either in the Charles Village area or downtown. But by moving more and more kids closer to Homewood it follows that the administration will only make the social scene worse.
Keeping students closer to campus will make the problems cited by any freshman or sophomore everyone's problem. If the past is any indication of how the administration will alleviate the social problems caused by moving all students on campus, then the social future does not look bright.
It should be clear that by taking control of student housing the student social life will suffer. This can already be seen by Hopkins' lost opportunity to create a fraternity row. The area on St. Paul street between Subway and Eddies Grocery would have been a perfect place for fraternities to set up shop.
Most of Hopkins' "peer institutions" have a fraternity row - yet our administration denies the possibility and instead opts to construct a new parking garage. As if it weren't enough to deny an opportunity for a fraternity row, Hopkins, together with Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse, Inc. have forced Pike and Wawa out of their houses in order to continue construction on the Charles Village Project. This harms the larger Hopkins social scene by eliminating a safe and stable source of social interaction. It should be clear that Hopkins will not seek a compromise between security, social and housing concerns. Instead it wants to seize control of all three. With the exception of security, it remains questionable whether this serves the interests of the University, the community and students.
- Michael Huerta is a junior International Studies and Applied Mathematics major.
