EDITORIAL: High rise move will kill Castle

The facility cannot support the needs of the Community Service Living-Learning Program. Moving the Community Service Living-Learning Program to High Rise North next fall is not a good decision. It's not good for the student participants. It's not good for those they benefit. And it's not good for the future of the program. Not a one of the current Castle residents is willing to relocate to the high rises. And no wonder: the buildings currently have little common space for meetings, they allow limited visibility and they make programming difficult. Imagine the disaster of an open house with 50 area children dealing with the elevators and trooping through the narrow hallways. Administrators provided strong support for the CSLLP when trying to sort out who had rights to the Castle -- the Psi Upsilon fraternity, which owns the building, or the University, which owns the land. But they have not provided a sufficient solution for the need to relocate. We hope that administrators will consider the move to the high rises temporary and continue to search for alternative locations. Current Castle residents, too, should demonstrate their commitment to the CSLLP by making an effort to come up with something that is to their liking and will ensure the future of the program. Given that there are currently no available buildings in the center of campus comparable to the Castle, an off-campus location would be the next best recourse. True, the program would see a sharp decrease in visibility among students. But participants would be closer and more visible to the West Philadelphia neighborhoods they strive to assist. Administrators did present the CSLLP with some off-campus options, but Castle residents found these spaces too small. Surely, though, there is a structure relatively close to campus that would satisfy their needs. One possibility would be the University-owned building at 3809 Walnut Street, which formerly housed the Kappa Delta sorority and has remained vacant for two years. If CSLLP participants would prefer to remain on campus, however, other dormitories would be more conducive to their programs than the high rises. Kings Court/English House, for instance, has lounges that are good for meetings, and programs could be held in the courtyard. In promoting the new 21st Century College House plan -- which is based, in large part, on programs like CSLLP -- administrators have emphasized the extent of flexibility and student choice it will allow. In this case, however, there doesn't seem to have been much of either. Rather than spreading the model, the University is killing the prototype.