Students at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) are freaking out about a proposed new dorm that will house over 4,000 students. The issue? The rooms have no windows, so yeah, I kind of get where they're coming from.
Charlie Munger, a 97-year-old billionaire and Warren Buffett's right-hand man, gifted UCSB a casual $200 million to build the dorm under one condition: he gets to make all of the design decisions.
In order to combat the issue of no windows, Munger has decided to add fake windows that will emit soft light, which seems to suggest that he understands that it's kind of hard to live without a window.
what if we kissed in the windowless ucsb mega-dorm room
In an interview, Munger said that he modeled the lights off of the fake portholes found in rooms on Disney cruise ships.
Trying not to get nostalgic but this was definitely my favorite part of college dorm life. #ucsb #mungerhall
In addition to the whole no windows thing, Munger's design requires eight students to share one bathroom. The entire building also only features two exits. For 4,000 people.
possible floor plan for UCSB’s new proposed walled city- I mean dorm 8 to a room, almost no windows, 4500 students, 2 building exits. forget a fire code, this has to break the Geneva conventions or something https://t.co/deu5pBQu7R
How could this go wrong?
I mean, dorm living typically isn't ideal as is. But to be stuck in a room with no windows?
I can just imagine waking up in a cold sweat thinking you missed your 8 a.m. class, trapped in a windowless box with no ability to tell what time it is.
If you thought this story was wild as is, it just keeps going.
An actual, trained architect on the school's review board resigned when the proposal came to light.
This isn't Munger's first rodeo when it comes to creating massive dorms with windowless bedrooms.
In a thread posted to r/UCSantaBarbara, u/DangerousCorn, a University of Michigan graduate student who lived in the dorm Munger designed, wrote that living there is "exactly as bad as people say it is."
"I got to the point where I was snoozing for 3 hours and completely lacked the ability to get out of bed on some days. I didn't know when to get up or when to go to sleep and the days just started blurring together. I bought a sunrise alarm clock (one of those clocks that gradually brightens to simulate a sunrise). It didn't help. I made my alarms noisier and switched up the tones. It didn't help."
What does this man have against waking up to the sound of chirping birds and golden sunlight?
People on social media are calling the setup a prison.
this is not a dorm, this is a prison. get ur shit together UCSB https://t.co/Re1x9LJ5JB
Some are even comparing life in these dorms to the Stanford Prison Experiment.
has anyone done this yet? ucsb prison experiment
And the Netflix hit Squid Game.
Interior render of the new Munger Hall dorm @ UCSB
One tweet pointed out that this new dorm is going to be a hard sell for prospective students.
UCSB tour guides furiously sweating how they are going to spin prison dorm https://t.co/4onQZETOwz
While others are noting that a lack of windows on a campus as stunning as UCSB is criminal.
Can't get over the UCSB prison dorm. "Come to Santa Barbara, a beautiful coastal city surrounded by sea on three sides and mountains on the other. It's 70 degrees in winter and the breeze is scented with salt and orange blossoms. Also, you will be living in a sealed Tupperware."
If I went to a school where the views looked like this? And was placed in a windowless dorm? I might honestly revolt.
I don't know about you, but I'd at least give my Sims a window?
the ucsb dorm layout looks like how i build things in sims
When it comes to the criticism, Munger doesn't seem to care. "I'd rather be a billionaire and not be loved by everybody than not have any money," he said in an interview.
After all, he made sure to leave room for the surfboards!
thinking about the storage room for 570 surfboards in the ucsb mega dorm
Wonder if they get any windows?