'Castle' program to relocate to High Rise North

The Living-Learning Program will displace all 12th-floor residents. The Office of Academic Programs and Residence Life confirmed yesterday that the Community Service Living-Learning Program currently housed in the Castle will relocate to High Rise North this fall. CSLLP is ending its 7-year stay in the former fraternity house on 36th and Locust streets at the end of the semester. The Psi Upsilon fraternity, which owns the building, will return to the house after being kicked off campus in 1990. The program, to be renamed the Community Service Residential Program, will make its new home on the 12th floor of the high rise -- which will soon be renamed as the Hamilton College House. The move is bad news for any current 12th floor residents who choose not to join the program, and would deny such residents the option of retaining their rooms next year. APRL Director Chris Dennis, however, stressed that those residents will be given a chance to retain the same type of room elsewhere in the high rises. Meanwhile, members of the Castle's CSLLP say the move will change the face of community service activity on campus. For one thing, none of the current residents of the program are willing to relocate to the high rises, according to CSLLP Program Director and College senior Margaret Quern. "We're not happy about this," she said. Residents have known they were facing their last year in the Castle since last spring, explained Adam Barzilay, a College junior in his second year with the CSLLP. In November, the group learned that their program could end up in the high rises. "We had a vote, a show of hands of who would be interested in living there," Barzilay recalled. "Not one hand went up." CSLLP members said that without a living room, the group won't be able to host its regular events, such as coffeehouses and lectures. They also agreed that living in a house helps unify the program's participants and the Castle's central location makes it more accessible to the student body. Dennis responded that the program can use the Rathskellar Lounge, which is located in the basement of High Rise North, for coffee houses and lectures, adding that the new location is more convenient to West Philadelphia service projects. But CSLLP members disagreed, fearing the program will be irreparably damaged by the move. "Moving the program to the high rises completely destroys it," said College sophomore Shefaali Desai, a CSLLP member. Quern said the members of her program were initially led to believe that the University would relocate them to an off-campus house, which she said would be "more in the community" and would allow the group to stay in a house setting. But Quern added that the prospective off-campus locations offered to the group would have only accommodated half the program's members. Barzilay said that earlier this fall, CSLLP members discussed moving the program to the Christian Association building, which is currently up for sale, or the former Division of Public Safety building at 3914 Locust Walk, across from High Rise North. But that discussion did not go far beyond the Castle meeting rooms. "We just felt like we weren't involved in the process of what was going on," Barzilay said, adding that members of the program were "being tossed around" by University administrators deciding the program's fate.