Jericho's Walls

I have written here before about the modularity of the original buildings, about the ephemeral nature of our space and the fact that architectural design followed pedagogical function. To the Founders, these were unusual ideas in 1970 but we quickly saw their utility in our daily lives. Unfortunately, later buildings have rejected these concepts and we have moved backwards to designated and fixed pedagogical space.

I bring all of this up because I recently came across a Press article that describes “Planning Guidelines” in a document presented to the Board of Trustees sometime in 1970. So, I sent Louise Tillstrom in the College Archives off on a search and she, of course, turned up the actual document in a trice.

That document is part of a “working paper” of the Campus Planning Committee which described concepts which any building should be designed around. The copy I have is dated June, 1970. No author is noted though I suspect it was written by the Campus Planner – Dick Schwartz – for the committee.

The complete document was over 21 pages long and it described a long list of facilities that were being planned: Classroom Space, Laboratory/Studio space, Computer Center Services among them. The document comments on Phase I buildings – the very first buildings on campus (Wings A, B, C and D) with a student population in 1971 of 1000 students. It also comments on yet-t0-be-built Phase II buildings completed in the Summer of 1972 with a student population of 2000 students.

Central to these concerns about new buildings and the students who would occupy them is the following statement:

Preservation of the natural environment should continue to be a central objective.

Much has been said about this centrality of the environment from the very beginning of the College to the present; indeed there are several important essays in the book describing this centrality in the contexts of the Environmental Studies Program, its faculty and students, the history of the College situated in South Jersey, the rise of “sustainability” and the present emphasis on a “Green College”.

I will list a few of the other important considerations and then comment on their history.

Faculty office areas are to be arranged in such a way that maximum exposure and intermixing of personnel from all academic disciplines will be encouraged. Isolation of any academic unit is to be avoided or other tendencies toward space “empire building”.
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Often, colleges have been departmentalized or remain that way because specific buildings have been provided for specific units and their specialized functions. It is Stockton State’s intent to promote greater interaction and integration among all programs, staff and students. This means the entire 7,500-student campus should be viewed as a “living-learning” center with as much mixing of academic, non-academic, living, etc. spaces as intelligent concern for logistics, traffic patterns, and workability permits. Perhaps encouraging different people to come together more frequently takes precedence over the convenience and comfort of like-minded people being housed together.
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All administrative areas are to be readily accessible to faculty, students, staff and public. A separate administrative building should not be built and administrative spaces are to be located throughout all buildings with convenience to the user of the administrative function representing a more important consideration than convenience to the administrator.
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Traffic patterns should be designed to promote contact between commuter and residence students and this should be complemented by numerous small, informal spaces for people to stop and chat upon meeting.
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All spaces are to be planned with maximum flexibility so that areas can be used for more than one purpose. For example, science areas and art studios should be usable as classrooms with a furniture change.
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Exterior spaces are to be developed for use as seating, study, circulation, and communication areas with walks, benches, kiosks, attractive lighting, informal group seating, and even a few hideways.
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I suspect that most faculty today would find these “quaint” and terribly impractical. “Space that can be changed by changing the furniture?” “But what about the fact that I have just arranged the seats in a circle?” Or, “I can’t teach in a classroom that doesn’t have a podium.”

Indeed, there has recently been a discussion about the arrangement of faculty offices. Younger faculty, who seem not to value living next to faculty not in their discipline, see no reason why offices should not cluster around a divisional center and, I might add, close to the copy machine and mail boxes. Older faculty seem to understand our original planning and seem to value living next door to humanists, mathematicians, chemists, accountants and nurses. If I had to bet on the outcome, I’d bet clustered offices will win and we will have lost another way of finding commonalities in our differences.

The present layout does work. I noticed today going to my class that at one end of the Gallery – where there are comfortable chairs overlooking the Arts and Sciences building – there were a dozen students chatting and typing on their computers.

As I walked down the stair, I came upon an area of high tables near one of our coffee-snack bars. There were probably 30 or 40 students eating and drinking coffee in transit to or from a class.

In the same area, students were streaming in from parking lots and housing on the other side of the lake, who would peel-off to go upstairs to a class or further down the Gallery to another wing. Because this is in the oldest part of the complex, students have been doing these very things for 40 years. The spine of the campus is a street and it works wondrously. For me, we need more activity on this street. We need sales, art, drama – last year a medieval play was presented in the Gallery in front of the Library – announcements, foreign foods, demonstrations, quick classes, music.

The street could support the early conviction that the whole College be a living-learning center. Unfortunately, the lines separating spaces have been drawn though not as clearly as they are on many campuses. There are activities – musical events, comics and other performers -- that are done in the dorm areas that do not appear on the street.

And what about meetings? While some areas of the Gallery are too raucous, there are places where, say, Student Senate meetings could be held. These are always held in some other, more interior space. Wouldn’t it be exciting,, however, to see College democracy in action on the street?

We have managed to keep from building an administrative center though the Presidential Complex in one wing is close to it. Like the faculty, I suspect administrators would argue efficiency but that word can hide all sorts of not-particularly-efficient-activity.

Participatory democracy, decentralization, personalization, stressing commonalities, rejection of class, distrusting privilege and equality – all de rigueur  in the 1960s and 1970s – seem old fashioned now. We took these very seriously on every level of our lives. It doesn’t take much to hear these ideas in the Planning Guidelines above. We “operationalized” each and every one of them.

Finally, I come to “hideways”. This is one idea that never appeared on campus and we are less for it. Why didn’t small areas appear where both students and faculty could meet in some privacy? Was it because later planners distrusted students and faculty. Was it because it was not appropriate for the college to supply intimate space? I’m not sure; what I am sure of is that in a community of 8000 students and 300+ faculty, there are very few spaces that are even partially private. Humans, in my opinion, need such spaces – for rumination, meditation or simply to be alone for a few minutes before a class. All of this is moot, of course; no public institution today would risk public condemnation of such an idea. It is evident from the article where this discussion started; it ends with this statement:

“Hideways?
Yes, hideways. And that, students, is real togetherness!”

Our loss.