Staff Editorial: Polishing a campus gem

Sometimes, it's the little things that are the hardest to accomplish.

As the finishing touches are put on the Wharton School's new $100 million dollar-plus Huntsman Hall and the $25 million Pottruck Health and Fitness Center, and while the new home of the Computer Science department, the $20 million Levine Hall, and Penn Hillel's new $12 million digs on 39th Street move toward completion, School of Arts and Sciences Dean Samuel Preston acknowledged that fundraising for the much-needed renovation of Bennett Hall is not going so well. Only a third of the $18 million budget has been raised.

Even worse, Preston doesn't see the money coming together for at least two more years -- four years after the plan was originally announced.

But as anyone who has had the pleasure of taking a class in the campus landmark can attest to, the building is literally falling apart. The cars roaring down Walnut Street are a constant disruption to instruction. The bathrooms look like something out of a 1940s period film.

And these things are happening right now, in the landmark home of one of the nation's best English Departments. Renovations simply cannot wait another two or three years.

No one is asking for a new, $100 million behemoth with escalators for the English and Music departments. No one expects the departments' alumni to have the financial wherewithal of a Jon Huntsman, Walter Annenberg or Jerome Fisher. But for a school that generally deals in billions of dollars, an $18 million renovation would seem to be a drop in the bucket.

The University's policy is generally not to embark on a major construction project until they have someone else to pay for it, and generally, this is good -- and financially sound -- policy.

But to leave campus gems like Bennett and College halls -- projects that do not allow Penn to shop for a "naming donor" -- in disrepair while waiting for outside generosity is just the opposite -- unsound policy.

These buildings not only house the cream of the University's academic offerings, they are intricately bound up in the history and tradition of this proud institution. And structures like Bennett Hall do not only serve individual departments, they are Penn treasures benefitting the whole of the community.

If the Pottruck Center warranted the expenditure of University funds -- a project which fell well short of fundraising goals -- then Bennett Hall, with all of its tradition, aesthetic beauty and history, is certainly worthy of a few dollars from Penn's coffers.

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