Trustees discuss budget for housing

The Board of Trustees met on campus last week for its annual Spring Meeting.

"I thought it was probably one of the best Kenyon board meetings I've ever been to," Chairman of the Board William Bennett '68 said. "There was a tremendous amount of participation; there was great discussion."

Kenyon and the Economy

The Investment Committee, the Buildings and Grounds Committee, the Budget and Finance Committee and the Executive Committee each devoted discussion to the College's liquidity, or "how much capital we have available," President S. Georgia Nugent said.

According to Nugent, many colleges have been evaluating their liquidities, and Vice President for Finance Joe Nelson has been analyzing Kenyon's liquidity over the past few months. "We're in relatively good shape and we're increasing our liquidity," Nugent said.

"We're just trying to be really thoughtful about new things we spend money on, and try[ing] to figure out where there's money to be saved in the general budget," Alan Rothenberg '67, chair of the Investment Committee and a 13-year Board member, said.

"The big benefit is the budget only gets about four percent of its support out of the endowment," he said. In comparison to other colleges, Kenyon uses a very small portion of its endowment to pay the College's day-to-day bills, according to Rothenberg. "Most of it still comes from tuition," he said.

"In general, the Board is excited about where Kenyon is and worried about the economy," Bennett said. "But, because our endowment is not as good as some of our competitors' we haven't been hurt as badly as other schools."

Townhouses on North Campus

"There are some preliminary plans that we have available for student housing at the north end of campus," Nugent said. "The Trustees voted to go ahead with finalizing those designs and with beginning to build."

The townhouse-style residences, which would house about 90 students, would create a neighborhood north of the Health and Counseling Center, according to Nugent, who said the new development would eventually replace both the Bexley and New Apartments.

Bennett, however, said that the Trustees "did not decide to build north campus housing. What we did was we authorized the Buildings and Grounds Committee to move ahead with the drawings and design to see how that housing would look."

"North campus townhouses seem like a good idea, and once they were finished, they probably would be really desirable as the newest housing on campus," Laura Paul '11 said. "However, a lot of students would probably protest any location suggested."

New South Housing Put on Hold

According to Nugent, the Trustees decided "to essentially table, for the time being, a large residence hall on the south end."

"We're not in a position to start a major project, and this would be a terrible time to go out and sell bonds," Rothenberg said. "Until there's either a lot of donors lined up who are interested in that project, or a market that would allow us to sell bonds, it doesn't make sense to do big things."

"That plan is actually pretty much complete, but it's a large building," Nugent said. "We haven't raised the funding for it yet, so for the time being that's been put on pause and we're going to focus our attention more on creating housing [on north campus]."

"The College has always tried to be careful about how we spend our money and right now this is a time when we're trying to be especially careful," Rothenberg said. "We're spending money we can find as opposed to spending money we don't have."

Art History Building to Break Ground; Studio Art Building Postponed

The Trustees discussed the new art history and studio art buildings at both their Fall and Winter Meetings, and reexamined the issue at the Spring Meeting, according to Nugent.

The Trustees decided the College "can't go ahead with studio art right now because we just don't have the funding at hand, but we can go ahead with art history," according to Nugent, who said that previously, "We'd been considering the two art buildings as essentially one project."

Through gifts, the College has already raised the money for the art history building, so the College does not need extra funds to build it, according to Bennett. "The only question is whether we start the building now or we wait for a year," he said.

The Trustees advised that the College re-bid the art history building and obtain new cost estimates for construction. "It's probably the best time for getting construction because costs have come down, so we're anticipating that we'll see a somewhat lower cost there," Nugent said.

"We could definitely do with more room than Bailey [House] has to offer," Art History Minor Marenka Thompson-Odlum '11 said. "Right now, we only have three slide projectors on the whole campus. I think it would be really great if we had a new, state-of-the-art slide projector room."

"Right now, [Bailey House] is pretty small," she said. "The classes are pretty tight, especially when some classes have 30 people and they all have to fit in one room."

In June, the Trustees are meeting for a retreat, where, "after we've gotten construction bids and after we know a little bit more about our incoming class, they will decide whether to go ahead immediately, starting this summer with construction, or they might say we're going to wait one more year and start then," according to Nugent.

"There are a lot of people interested in art history…and a lot of people are really fond of the professors, so I think it would be really great to expand the department," Thompson-Odlum said. "We might be able to attract more professors with diverse styles and interests if we had a bigger house for the department," she said, noting the particular absence of an African Art professor.