Gianna Hayes
Chief News Editor
In an April 10 interview with the Voice, Senior Director of Student Life, ResLife & Community Standards John Reynolds outlined housing updates, including plans for houses and apartments on campus.
Houses along East University Street from Massaro House to Hider Apartments will be taken offline for the next academic year. This includes Hider House, which has served as student housing, and Meyer House, which has been used mainly as a rental unit for “visiting staff or short-term housing for people transitioning to The College of Wooster,” per Reynolds.
Residential areas along Stibbs Avenue and Spink Street are being taken offline as well. The houses affected by this decision are Aultz, Avery, Frye, Howell, McDavitt, Morris, Rickett, Schlabach and Weber houses. “The smallest houses that are along the East Spink and Stibbs streets in my opinion are the roughest ones,” Reynolds said. “They’re cute and endearing and students like to live in them, but also, like, compared to a Douglass and an upcoming Compton, and Armington and Stevenson and Brush, they’re just not comparable.”
Reynolds shared that these houses will likely be demolished to clear space for the Greenway Plan, a project that President Anne McCall is preparing with the goal of improving green spaces on campus. When asked over email by the Voice, McCall shared that there are no set plans currently, but that there will be more information in the coming months.
“I’m not too familiar with what the overall plan is going to look like,” Reynolds explained, “but [it will be] someplace where students can engage with that area similar to [a] botanical or some kind of garden.”
McCall shared that the plan falls in line with goals described in the Strategic Action Plan and builds on the founding of the Abbey Arboretum, which was announced in an email from McCall on Thursday, April 2. The Abbey Arboretum encompasses the entire College, and is named for alumnus Paul Abbey ’73 and his wife Constance Norweb Abbey, who donated a seven-figure gift to support the arboretum.
Henderson Apartments will remain offline, as issues with the slate roof require extensive and costly repairs. North Beall Street houses and apartments will otherwise continue to be online, as well as Fairlawn Apartments on E. Wayne Avenue.
Colonial and Corner houses remain online, but are not fully filled at this time. Formerly service houses, Reynolds noted that they are larger houses, and that some service agencies dropped their program with the College due to a decrease in student interest. The Office of Residence Life (ResLife) works with service agencies in the community like Goodwill, People to People Ministries and the Boys and Girls Club to allow students to live in program houses dedicated to volunteering with those agencies.
ResLife is also collaborating with Habitat for Humanity to take surplus furniture from the houses being taken offline and potentially demolished as part of the Greenway Plan.
Some student organizations also have program houses, such as Jewish Student Organization or Common Grounds. Reynolds mentioned that “there’s a plan to honor and support those agencies and then program houses … as long as they continue to maintain interest.” African Student Union and Live Action Roleplay (LARP) Club recently dropped their program house.
Renovations on Compton Hall are ongoing, and are expected to be finished for the 2026-27 academic year. Holden Hall will be taken offline next year, but renovations are not yet planned, as a lot of repairs are expected. Holden is currently the largest dormitory on campus, but only houses approximately 90 students.
“I think that for next year, Holden could be one of our backup communities, just in case we have a larger facilities issue in another space,” Reynolds noted, citing relocation of students from Douglass Hall in fall 2023 due to problems that required renovation.
“I think anytime you look at student housing and how decisions are made, it’s based on cost, it’s based on enrollment and filling the building, it’s based on needs for the community,” Reynolds said. “I think the overarching conversations that I have been part of is [that] we want students to have good housing.”
