EDITORIAL: Long-awaited overall overhaul

Proposals for future residences and campus retail are ambitious and exciting - but they will be expensive. · The possibility of knocking down the high rises and moving students to renovated hotel space -- and possibly new dormitory space -- in the north campus area, near Market Street, · Moving the School of Social Work and Graduate School of Education out of their present, "ugly" Locust Walk homes, · Splitting the Psychology Department into two halves, which explains why giving it The Book Store's current site as a unifying space doesn't make sense, · Closing 36th Street between Walnut and Chestnut to create a quirky, Manayunk-like retail corridor and · Building another hotel in University City to replace the Sheraton, which will be converted to dorm housing. These proposals raise numerous questions, especially because their release comes months before the Biddison Hier consulting team is scheduled to release recommendations for long-term campus facilities planning. First, if the heart of the University moves north, rather than west, what will become of West Philadelphia, where students now have off-campus houses and apartments and some faculty and staff members do live with their families? Second, what is more important to administrators -- aesthetics or academics? While community members of all ages and affiliations will undoubtedly benefit from increased retailing options in the neighborhood, the University already owns blocks of storefronts it can't fill. Maintaining these costs money, which could be better used to reduce deficits in places like the School of Arts and Sciences. Finally, just two years ago, Rodin and Chodorow scrapped plans for the Revlon Center student union project because of its non-central location. The slowly progressing Perelman Quad, they argued at the time, would bring student life back to the heart of campus, where it belonged. Are they having second thoughts? Rodin's newest agendas for the University, which -- if realized -- will net a set of shiny new buildings and perhaps that elusive better national reputation she seeks, seem overwhelmingly positive. And maybe, in truth, they are. But swallowing them whole, without reflecting on their very real, wide-ranging implications for the future of this campus and its surrounding community, would be incredibly short-sighted.