At the end of the fall 2005 semester, Long Hall was closed to make needed budget cuts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.To meet the needs of the male students who planned on residing in Long Hall for the spring 2006 semester, the administration made Ellender Hall co-ed. The second and third floors will occupied by male, and the fourth, fifth and sixth floors will be for the women. The first floor, which consists of the lobby, will be shared between the men and women residing in Ellender.
“With what Louisiana has gone through in the last few months, the disasters that have hit, the state is looking at tightening up its belt budget wise,” Judy Daniels, dean of student life, said. “We still want to be able to meet the needs of our students and serve them at the same level or higher than we did before. We didn’t want it to impact them.”
The number of men signed up to return to Long Hall this semester was such that they could be placed in Ellender Hall, rather than operate lights, water, utilities and staffing for a small number of residents. Exact figures were not available as of press time, Scott Jenkins, director of Auxiliary Services, said.
“When you open a building, you incur all those budgetary concerns, and if we close the building, we don’t have to pay for all of those things so we can save that money,” Daniels said.
This movement of residents from Long Hall to Ellender allows for administration to close Long Hall.
“Long Hall is nothing but a lot of memories for many students that have come and gone from Nicholls,” Allen Gordey, elementary education junior from Franklin, said. “Unfortunately, those memories are slowly growing mold and fungus, literally.”
The closing of Long Hall is not permanent. Daniels said that the administration anticipates the normal requests from both men and women students who want to reside on campus for the fall 2006 semester. This will require Long Hall to be reopened to house the men and free the space on the first two floors of Ellender for more women.
While Long Hall is closed, maintenance crews will have the chance to go in to clean, paint and repair the building, which could not be done with its constant activity of residents during fall and spring semesters and camps during the summer.
The administration is hoping for a positive outcome of the changes this semester dealing with Long and Ellender Halls.
“I think the change will be an overall positive,” Diane Garvey, director of residence life, said. “I have had meetings with the Ellender staff, talking with them about the different types of community programming that they’re going to have to do and addressing the individual issues.”
Garvey said she is sure there will be students who may or may not be comfortable living with members of the opposite sex and so she is working closely with the hall director and the staff to be proactive in providing information for the residents and addressing their concerns.
“I think that making Ellender co-ed will be taken well,” Haley Burkett, freshman from Baton Rouge, said. “It gives students in the hall more opportunity to meet different people in the common areas and make new friends.”
All residents of Ellender Hall, will have to go downstairs to the lobby to check in their visitors, and visitors must leave their I.D. at the desk so that the staff knows who is in the building at all times.
Male and female residents who wish to visit a member of the opposite sex must go through the same process. Men will have to take the stairs to their assigned floors, while women will take the elevators, which will be programmed to automatically go to their floors.
“If a girl walks out of her room at midnight or two in the morning, we want to make sure that she won’t get startled by some guy even if he lives in the building,” Daniels said. “He shouldn’t be on that floor.”
“Really, I don’t think that a co-ed Ellender would work out,” Brad Duet, pre-veterinarian sophomore from Galliano, said. “Even with the alarms and the strict rules, the boys will still be trying to get to the girl’s area. If they would just think about it, what is stopping the boys from just rushing the stairway? They would have to search every room every time the alarm would go off, and what’s to stop the girls from taking the stairs to the men’s area? I’m sorry to say, but the people that work the front desk never watch what’s going on very well. Plus, even though this is college, I think some parents will have a problem with this arrangement.”
This co-ed arrangement is not new to the Nicholls campus. When Meade Hall was an active dorm, it, too, was co-ed. Millet-Zeringue Hall, consists of Millet, a men’s dorm, and Zeringue, a women’s dorm, which are joined by a shared lobby.
“We have young adults occupying these buildings, these are not kids,” Daniels said. “If anyone violates the rules, they will be out of the building; they are not children.
