Bethel leadership mulls demolition of Haury Hall
Bethel leadership mulls demolition of Haury Hall
At the annual fall board meetings in October, the topic of improving first-year recruitment took center stage.
With Haury Hall being one of the oldest buildings at Bethel College and the institution’s leadership rapidly striving to make the campus look its best, the dorm designated for all first-year students fell into the crosshairs of discussions at the annual fall board meetings that took place in October.
Haury, as it’s commonly referred to, has faced mixed reactions among its inhabitants for decades now. And while it has its upsides, those at the top of the school’s food chain have caught wind of the concerns — and recognize that they’re now morphing into tangible handicaps.
That’s why, during one of the public sessions of the meetings, discussions were held amongst the board of directors as to whether Haury should be updated with improvements or torn down and replaced altogether.
The rationale for such a decision is simple: prospective students aren’t attracted to the first-year living situation Bethel offers. With so many visits taking place throughout the year on Bethel’s campus, leadership acknowledges that Bethel has ended up trying to hide Haury from its visitors.
“It has a major effect [on recruiting], especially when we know that other schools in our conference are building new halls or have halls that are newer than ours,” Heidi Hoskinson, Vice President for Enrollment Management, said.
Each room in Haury, which was built in 1957, consists of two beds and two closets. For comparison, Green Residence Hall on the campus of Friends University was constructed for first-year students in 2002 and is divided into 32 suites with each suite consisting of three bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and two bathrooms.
In turn, this gap — to an extent — hinders the recruitment process for many athletic teams at Bethel, and could potentially be linked (along with COVID-19) to the steady (albeit minuscule) decline in new first-year students enrolling at Bethel each fall since 2020.
“When [our recruits] arrive [at Bethel] on visits, we tell them it’s an old-school dorm, it’s got one bathroom you have to share, and it’s probably not the nicest place in the world,” head men’s basketball coach Jayson Artaz said. “But on the basketball side of things, I don’t know if most recruits are gonna be making their decision based on a dorm.”
Hoskinson added, “Are students still willing to come to Bethel? Yes. But I think it could make a difference on some people who look around and say, ‘Yeah, I might like that living situation better than the one at Bethel.’”
With the arms race for updated first-year housing in full swing among small private schools across the nation, Bethel leadership has a big decision looming with the fate of Haury on the line: hit the reset button, or improve the building that has been a historic cornerstone of campus.
No timeline for this decision was provided to The Collegian.