Facts: The Board of Trustees approved a plan to destroy Harrelson Hall. The plan states the demolition is slated for 2014 after Talley Student Center is completely renovated. A new building is planned to fill the space.
Opinion: All of students’ bashing has paid off with the demolition and the necessity has been proven by science. Harrelson will be missed, but it will also be a fond farewell. Having a new building on Central Campus will be refreshing.
The first time Technician covered the newly constructed Harrelson Hall, the article introduced the new classroom building as “not only strikingly attractive,” but “extremely functional.” At the time of its construction, the building cost $2 million to construct and doubled the classroom space on campus.
But since that initial glowing review, it has become the butt of many jokes, has helped the University win “ugly campus” awards and prompted students to boast about the uncomfortable arrangements of the classrooms well after their graduation.
Students have also abused the building since its conception, sparking a bit of nostalgia. In the ’60s, students would steal grocery carts from the local market and ride down the building’s interior ramp. During the 1983 bonfire on the Brickyard after the NCAA Championship, students ripped the doors off the building and threw them in the flames.
Harrelson Hall has outlived its function. It isn’t as large as the math department’s new building — SAS Hall — and lacks the comfort of spacious, new classrooms and easy-to-travel halls. The ramps are not handicap-friendly and the confusing interior isn’t even 8-a.m.-friendly. A hodge-podge of classes and offices shuffle in and out of the building, but it fails to provide any accommodating space to any one department.
The demolition of Harrelson Hall marks a new stage in N.C. State’s history and will change the face of the University after it is done. Although students may miss its spaceship-shaped facade on the Brickyard, a new building would be more welcome. The University should learn from its fifty-year-old mistake and make the new building even more “functional” and “attractive.”
If construction for the new Talley Student Center stays on track, in 2014 the N.C. State community will proudly roll Harrelson Hall off campus and look for a new edition to sparse old Central Campus. Although the new building will surely cost more than $2 million now, in the long run, N.C. State can put Harrelson Hall in its past and move forward with more architectural integrity.