Mr. Moyle, I thought your claim that the ISU Master Plan is a failure was a little outrageous, so I did some research for you.

A room in Wilson hall costs $3,642 for the year.

A single occupancy room in Hawthorn court is $3,510 and a double occupancy room is $3,150. Now here is where you were right but misleading – with a 20 meal per week plan in Wilson, which costs $2,074, the grand total (room + meal plan) comes to $5,716.

However, you failed to mention that Hawthorn residents are not required to have a meal plan.

A 20-meal plan comes out to a little over $3 per meal for all you can eat, whereas Hawthorn Court residents have to buy and prepare their own meals, which is more expensive, a big difference.

So in reality Wilson Hall isn’t such a bad deal when you do the math.

Another issue you forgot to mention was that despite the university tearing down some halls, they actually only lost about 300 beds from Helser this summer, and gained about 1,000 beds from the second phase of Hawthorn opening up.

That created around 700 more beds this year. Before the rest of Helser and part of Towers come down, there will be brand new halls in UDA open to make up for the beds lost.

Also, if the Master Plan is such a failure, why does there seem to be more people wanting to live on campus than any previous year?

Doesn’t sound like a failure to me if you have more demand than supply.

A little advice – before you write another article, do some research first so your article is filled with more fact-based arguments rather than misinformed generalizations.

Travis Simpson

Junior

Management Information Systems