By Robert Beeland
Executive Editor
A brand new residence hall is being built on campus next to Snowden and across from McCrady. If you are yet to notice, I am ashamed of you and implore you to leave the disgusting caverns of your room to explore the wonders of central campus. You disgust me, yet I will indulge you this information nevertheless. In addition to the new housing, rumors are spreading like the plague that the university has plans to expand the total undergraduate enrollment. At this point, I ask you, most reprehensible reader, why?
Since my time has begun here on the Mountain, Sewanee has been my home-away-from-home and, truly, a paradise on earth. As I sit here now, writing this article, I hear the joyous revelry and cherubic melodies of a group of musically-inclined partygoers outside my window. A fresh layer of snowfall makes the Domain nearly indiscernible from that of God’s heavenly kingdom. I weep at the thought of leaving this place. The visceral response that Sewanee induces in me is, in large part, I believe, a result of the intimate community of friends that I have developed here by a stroke of good fortune. So, at the risk of sounding like a change-fearing Trump-esque figure, I will say that I am concerned with the idea of an increased enrollment.
As a member of Residential Life staff, I am acutely familiar with the troubles the university already faces with regards to finding homes for students in residence halls. And while I’d hope that the construction of new housing would be intended to alleviate these pressures, I am doubtful that it would come without an increase in overall student population. With this increase comes more faculty, more infrastructure needs, more everything. As I near the end of this article, and am faced with my ever-increasing tone of metathesiophobia, I am left only to remind you, the readers, of the certain kind of magic that exists in a close, thin place like Sewanee. I think part of that magic is only possible with the intimacy that Sewanee currently affords us as members of this community. Should that community expand further into the 13,000 acres of Domain left, I can only hope that it would retain the harmonious closeness that I’ve experienced here at Sewanee.