Which dining hall on west campus will reign supreme?

Prof. Dorothy Sue Cobble, labor studies and employment relations, Rutgers University, spoke to a packed ILR Auditorium yesterday. 

Consider this: the Class of 2008 will be the last Cornell class with any memories of West Campus before the West Campus House System opened its first house, Alice Cook House, in August 2004. Since then the House System has tripled with Carl Becker House opening in 2005 and Hans Bethe House opening this fall. Next August, house four, William Keeton House, will open. When as yet unnamed house five join this lineup in a few years, 1,800 Cornell sophomores, juniors and seniors will live, eat, work, debate, reflect, recreate, and relax in the West Campus House System together with five House Professor-Deans, five assistant deans, 29 graduate resident fellows, 15 student assistants and 150 House Fellows — Cornell faculty and senior administrators who venture down the hill to participate in various House activities.

If like many not-so-early-birds you’ve been snoozing through that 8:40 class, you probably should have dropped your class. Or lived on West Campus.

“It’s like a second alarm,” said Rachel Holloway ’10. “The construction starts at 8 a.m. every morning which is fine because it helps me get up. It’s really no inconvenience at all.”

Since construction on the West Campus Residential Initiative began in 2003, the “Class of” halls have all been demolished and three of the five new residential dorms — Cook, Becker and Bethe — now house students.

Construction on the remaining two houses was originally set to be completed in 2010, but is now scheduled for August 2008.