For the past six months, residential halls in the South Residential Village have been experiencing substantial renovations, including replacement of the furniture in individual rooms in some buildings, as well as in the common area of each suite. Renovation and repairs were also made on the “elephant stairs”leading to the top of the hill, which led to periodic closures of the stairs this summer as well as complete closure of the buildings on top of the hill.

“We got new common room furniture on Murray Hill last January, and top of the hill just got new furniture (common room and individual room) this summer,” said Laura Riegger, residential community director of Murray Hill Complex.

Residential halls on top of the hill (Carlton Road), which include Michelson, Kusch and Glaser, received new furniture in each individual room, as well as new common room furniture in each suite. However, bottom of the hill (Murray Hill Road) including Howe, Tippit, Staley and Alumni house only have new furniture in the common areas for the time being.

“…from what I heard, people really like their common area furniture,” said McKenzie Wallace, who is also a residential community director of Murray Hill Complex. “Some [students] really like it and some [other students] wish it had different functionalities,”.

Student feedback about the new furniture is, for the most part, positive according to Wallace. Second-year student Disha Bhargarva was concerned with the new furniture.

“The desk is kind of small and the bed creaks even with [little motion],” said Disha Bhargarva.

The old bed had very stable wooden bedposts and no headboard, while the new one has metal sticks as support and a wooden bed board. One of the main issues Bhargarva saw with the new furniture is that the new bed is not able to be lofted any higher, as the old ones used to be. Residents living on the top of the hill who wish to loft the bed high enough to put their desk underneath and have more floor space are no longer able to do that; the individual SRV rooms are some of the smallest single-bed rooms on campus.

But Bhargarva also saw many satisfying aspects to the new furniture.

“You can lock the drawer so if you have anything important you can put it in there and lock it,” says Bhargarva.

The new rolling chair also adds to the convenience, as does the extra bed railing, which you can attach to your bed and put things on. Instead of a single couch, common areas are outfitted with a “sectional” style couch that can be separated into several different chairs.

New furniture was chosen through a student survey in the spring. Various furniture choices were displayed in the Tinkham Veale University Center for students to vote on, and installation of more of the new furniture is planned for other areas of campus in the future, including Greek houses.

University Housing has said that all furniture in campus residential facilities is expected to be replaced within the next six or seven years.