More than 1,000 Chatham University community members are demanding answers after the school unexpectedly announced the closure of the lone residence hall on its North Hills campus last month to the surprise of at least 30 students who already deposited funds to live there during the fall semester.
The university told students July 1 it was closing its Orchard Hall dormitory on its Eden Hall campus in Richland because of its inability to reach full occupancy and to stop financial losses from running a subsidized residence for a smaller group of students.
Chatham said it offered all students who made housing deposits for Orchard Hall accommodations on its Shadyside campus for the upcoming semester. But students who planned to live in Orchard Hall said they had to scramble to figure out new housing plans and have concerns over transportation to and from their classes and activities at the Eden Hall campus, which is about 45 minutes north of the city.
“The fact that it was out of the blue threw myself and a lot of the people here for a loop because we didn’t know this was going to happen, we didn’t expect this,” said Jacob Nicotra, a Chatham senior. “Suddenly, we get an email from the [administration] saying, ‘Hey, with a heavy heart we decided to close the dorm. Be out of the dorm.’ And we were like, ‘What do you mean?’”
After the closure was announced, a group of Chatham students, alumni and other stakeholders billing themselves as Chatham Students United circulated a petition imploring the university to keep Orchard Hall open at least through the 2024-25 school year and requesting further negotiations on student housing in addition to increased transparency from the school.
A delegation from the group delivered the petition — it garnered more than 1,000 signatures in less than 10 days — to Chatham’s administration on July 18, but they were told the decision to close the dormitory was final.
“Chatham appreciates the advocacy of our students, has agreed to meet with them this semester on the issues they raised, and informed them that the residential experience at Orchard Hall will not reopen for the academic year as the decision is final,” university spokesperson Bill Campbell said in an email.
Campbell said that Orchard Hall, which opened in 2015, had the capacity to support more than 60 students who attended Chatham’s Falk School of Sustainability & Environment. But only 10% to 20% of eligible students chose to live at Orchard Hall instead of the Shadyside campus despite the Falk School’s enrollment growing by 50% during that same period, he added.
Chatham Students United said it knew of at least 38 students who planned to live at Orchard Hall this fall.
Campbell said that transportation between the Shadyside and Eden Hall campuses would be provided “as needed” throughout the day, but the schedule has not been finalized.
For some students, though, the decision to close Orchard Hall follows a trend of austerity measures taken by Chatham in recent years that lacked evidence of necessity.
Lindsey Disler, a Chatham graduate student who planned on living at Orchard Hall this upcoming semester, pointed to the university making cuts to its writers residency and women in politics programs, as well as staff layoffs, that she said were never fully explained by the school.
“[The university] will say, ‘Oh, we’re in a budget crisis’ to cut things and push people into accepting it,” Disler said. “At the end of last fall, they said, ‘We’re almost out of the budget deficit, we’re doing great.’ And all of a sudden, now they’re saying, ‘Oh no, we’re actually still really struggling.’”
At the same time, Chatham’s faculty members have made a push to form a union with the American Federation of Teachers in large part, they said, because they feel the university fails to provide clarity on financial matters that have led to cuts. Chatham has pushed back hard against the organizing effort even though the faculty claims there is broad support for a union.
“Given that there’s been mismanagement by the past two presidents and administrations at Chatham, what’s to stop this current administration and this current board of trustees from cutting it to oblivion?” Disler said. “We’re worried this austerity will lead the college into nonexistence.”
It remains to be seen what will come of talks between Chatham Students United and the university. The students who planned to live at Orchard Hall, however, have more urgent matters to figure out as the start of the school year is just weeks away.
Nicotra said he has secured housing in the city, although not on the Shadyside campus. He said he has heard that some professors who taught classes at Eden Hall will move them to Shadyside this year, but he still has questions about transportation for when he needs to go to the North Hills campus.
Still, he said he remains disappointed that he will not be able to live on the bucolic Eden Hall campus, where lush woods surround the school’s farm that is run by sustainability students. And even more disappointing, he said, is the way the university handled the closure.
“The fact that [Chatham] decided it would be in apparently all of our best interests to close the dorm with a month’s notice is what we are disagreeing with,” Nicotra said. “It’s not the fact that they are closing it; it’s the fact that they gave us no heads-up and they’re not treating us like we’re students. They’re treating us like we’re someone beneath them that they can just hurdle into a corner.”
Andrew writes about education and more for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Email him at agoldstein@unionprogress.com.