COLUMN: A Plea to Mr. Perelman

From Mike Nadel's "Give 'em Hell," Fall '95 From Mike Nadel's "Give 'em Hell," Fall '95Ron Perelman, the multi-millionaire who leads the Revlon Corporation, has made a decision. Perelman has decided to give President Rodin and Provost Chodorow the go-ahead for plans to construct their proposed new student center, Perelman Quadrangle. Students learned of the Perelman Quad through a DP leak instead of through an announcement from the President's office. This is because the administration did not want to declare the Revlon Center dead until Mr. Perelman had agreed to the new idea. Four months passed without word from Mr. Perelman. Until this week. Before yesterday, the make-up mogul has been conspicuously absent from the pages of this newspaper, and a Lexis/Nexis search reveals little more about his activities during this semester. Apparently Mr. Perelman was caught in a fire at New York's posh Four Seasons restaurant. And, as has been frequently reported, his ex-wife held a press conference to announce that she is in love with Alphonse D'amato, the famously unsexy senator from New York. Just goes to show, there's no accounting for taste. Actually, that age-old axiom helps explain the administration's support for the Perelman Quad in the first place. Perelman Quad is to student centers what Al D'amato is to choices in husbands. When I first saw the DP headline in January and read about the new proposal, I was angry. As a junior in high school back in 1991, the University had told me that the Revlon Center would be open by the fall of my freshman year. Now word had trickled out that it was not to be built at all. Something must be done about this, I thought. But the next day, Provost Chodorow called a meeting of student leaders, and he discussed his plan. He put up the blueprints, he explained how everything fit together, and he talked about how much the Trustees liked this new vision. The provost's enthusiasm was infectious. We were sold. Or rather, sold out. Fortunately, only two days have gone by since Mr. Perelman decided to give the project his approval. Nothing irrevocable has been done yet. There is still time to step back and examine the concept of the Perelman Quad. Having done so, I now see that my initial reaction was correct. Perelman Quad is greatly flawed. Consider the aesthetics. The plan calls for Logan Hall and Williams Hall to be joined by a glass atrium. Logan Hall, with its beautiful and newly refurbished stone, was constructed in a time before electricity. It is considered to be a campus gem. Williams Hall is made of the cold red brick of the 1960s. And we're going to connect them with a strange glass structure? Think how it will look! Why would we do that to our campus? Then there is the question of money. Administration estimates place the total cost of Perelman Quad, which is to be built in phases, at $60 million. But consider this: The University spent $15 million just to remove the green stuff from the exteriors of Logan and College Halls. If it costs that much just to renovate the outsides of two buildings, how can it possibly cost only $60 million to completely renovate and restructure the interior of four buildings and create underground tunnels beneath an entire city block? Even if the $60 million figure is accurate, the money still isn't there. Perelman has pledged $20 million. The rest, President Rodin said Wednesday, will come from "fundraising." It is difficult to see how fixing up four old buildings and giving a block of campus a new name will engender the excitement needed to raise $40 million more. Since no new buildings are involved, this project could be stopped whenever it goes over budget, thus leaving students once again without a student center. Not that Perelman Quad will be much of a student center. These buildings simply cannot be changed from what they are into top-notch facilities. Irvine Auditorium may be a historical treasure, but it is useless as an auditorium. Everyone who has seen presentations by Penn Film Society or who saw Ben and Jerry speak last week knows that the acoustics in the building are beyond rehabilitation. Irvine is the wrong answer to the lack of performing arts space on campus. Perelman Quad calls for the classroom from hell, Logan 17, to be turned into a concert hall. Yet the two enormous pillars and eighteenth century design, which make it an inadequate learning space, doom it to failure as a place for theatrical events. All of these buildings are ancient. The electrical wiring changes needed to bring them into the next century will be extremely difficult and prohibitively expensive. The engineers who are currently struggling to fix College Hall right now can confirm this. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is the issue of location. Perelman Quad was designed under the premise that this area is the center of campus. But it is not. Many Nursing students, most Wharton students and some College students rarely go past 36th Street during the day. And at night, when most extracurricular activity occurs, the center of campus shifts even further west. Student organizations increasingly avoid Houston Hall as a meeting place, not just because of the condition of the building, but because it is too far out of the way. Most non-freshmen live west of 38th Street. A six-block walk is not relished in the dead of winter. This is why the Hall of Flags is increasingly empty while business at Chats is booming. Whether this indicates laziness or not is irrelevant; it is realty. The president and the provost had only been at the University for a few months when they dreamed up Perelman Quad, so they may not realize the problems with the idea. But as students, we should. I have taken foreign language classes in Williams Hall for three years. I know it can't be rehabilitated and filled with music practice rooms. I've been to countless events in Irvine that would have been better if they'd been somewhere else. I took Psych 1 in Logan 17, and many times I was among the substantial portion of the class that couldn't see the professor from behind the pillars. Over and over again, I've heard people complain about having to make the trip to Houston Hall for a meeting. Many times they've just decided it wasn't worth going. If students do not go to the new student center, it will fail. And if we're going to invest $60 million to get our new toy, we should be sure it's going to work. So I have a plea for Mr. Perelman: Change your mind. Nix Perelman Quad. It is not to late to send the president and the provost back to the drawing board to create a real student center. Ask them to present a proposal that is not merely satisfactory but that is thrilling. Ask them to do it right away. Yes, such a course of action will cause embarrassment for President Rodin and maybe even for you as well. But Perelman Quad is the wrong thing for this campus. It is a mistake you should not allow the University to make. Let's begin again. An appropriate location to consider for a new student center might be Superblock. A building could be constructed to form an "L" around High Rise East, replacing 1920 Commons, the parking garage and Mayer Hall. There is plenty of room to create a building that meets student needs and is a lot closer to where most of us live. Throughout April, juniors in high school visit Penn. This year's visitors will one day comprise the Class of 2000. Let's keep the promises that were broken for us. We don't have to give them the inevitable disappointment of Perelman Quad. Let's build them a truly spectacular student center. Mr. Perelman, it's up to you.