President's Postings: East Campus

December 15, 2006: First of all, I think East Campus is a great project. It's very encouraging that the University is making graduate student housing a priority in this project. The University has finally realized that the lack of affordable housing for graduate students is impacting its ability to attract high-quality graduate students (better late than never I suppose).

The current plans for East Campus are to have 450 "affordable" beds for graduate students. Cost would be $600/person for a 4BR apartment, or $950/person for a 2BR apartment. It remains to be seen whether this will be a good deal for the money. This depends on how high-quality the housing ends up being, and on how much housing prices in the area change between now and then. If the last few years are any indication, we can expect area housing prices to do nothing but increase.

I remain very troubled however by the lack of openness in the process, and in the complete lack of student involvement in the most important decisions being made about this project. A big focus of the project is graduate student housing ... so shouldn't there be some grad student input into major project decisions? So far, there has been none.

The East Campus Steering Committee includes an undergraduate and a graduate student, however this committee isn't making the most important decisions. They are merely offering recommendations and ideas.

The East Campus Selection Committee has NO student representation, and has select the short list of development teams for the project. Information that is not public includes:

• Number of finalist development teams
• Who the finalist development teams are
• Who is on the Selection Committee

This is a public university, funded in large part by taxpayer dollars. The University owes it to the campus community, as well as the taxpayers of the state, to be more open.

Laura Moore
GSG President

Some links:

East Campus Initiative Site: http://www.eastcampus.umd.edu/