It’s the second Monday of the semester, and already the Daily has received heated letters and phone calls from members of Iowa State’s administration.

What has ISU officials so worked up?

Maple Hall.

It should be no secret by now that members of the Daily’s editorial board aren’t big fans of the newest dorms on campus. We wrote an editorial criticizing the hall as being unnecessarily restrictive in its security and unreasonably prohibitive in its selection of upperclassmen who may live there.

Administrators, including Department of Residence Director Randy Alexander, responded by saying that Maple Hall is exactly what some students want, or the department wouldn’t have received 1,200 requests for the 488 available spots in the hall.

Alexander and other ISU higher-ups might be right. Maple Hall may be exactly what some students want, and it may be the perfect addition to the Iowa State campus.

But I don’t think so.

It isn’t just Maple’s restrictions and prohibitions that bother me. It’s the whole attitude about the hall that sets a dangerous precedent for all new dorms that will soon be coming along as part of Iowa State’s Master Plan.

In the Daily’s front-page story about Maple last Monday, two students were quoted saying they loved the new hall.

“This is so much nicer than any other room I’ve been in,” said Eric Fatka, junior in animal science.

Fatka’s roommate was equally impressed.

“It’s awesome,” said Ed Tubbs, junior in computer engineering. “It’s like a hotel room.”

But Maple Hall — or any other dorm on campus, for that matter — is not a Radisson.

It’s a dorm.

Don’t get me wrong. The dorms at Iowa State should be nice. People should enjoy living in them, and no one should feel like he or she is living in an army barrack.

But students also should never be able to confuse dorms with hotels. When they do, the whole purpose of living in dorms will be lost.

During my freshman year, I lived in Helser Hall. I didn’t particularly enjoy it, because it did feel a little too much like a sterile prison cell. But the sense of community that was built there and in the other two dorms I lived in is what college was all about.

Sure, I would’ve loved having my own bathroom with a personal shower all to myself. But there are tons of people I never would have met if I hadn’t been forced to traipse down to the floor’s bathroom.

And yes, it would’ve been nice to be able to cook for myself instead of enduring some of the offerings in food service. But complaining with other students about the food is how you get to know them during your freshman year. You can’t pick that up if you’re sitting in your room eating your own food.

The point is, some of these inconveniences that ISU is trying to do away with are essential to every student’s college experience.

I understand that ISU administrators are trying to cater to the needs of potential students. I understand they’ve built their Master Plan strategy on “market research” that tells them what students want.

But students will always say they want kitchenettes in their rooms and private bathrooms. They probably also want personal fireplaces and full-service dry cleaning. But none of those things are necessary to a good dormitory.

And honestly, they aren’t at all what kids are looking for in a good college.

Students come to college to learn — about their chosen fields and about life. Students want to grow and develop at college. They want to be stimulated intellectually and socially.

Students may pick a college based on the campus, but they do not as a whole pick academic institutions based on the dorms. They never have, and they never will.

You can have ugly, drab, boring dorms, and if the college is lively and open and encourages discourse and discussion, students will still come in droves.

But if the college restricts thought and only allows students to speak their minds at certain times and in certain places, you can create beautiful, Radisson-esque dorm rooms and enrollment will still drop.

Wonderful dorm rooms do not necessarily equal a wonderful college. Students know that.

Maple Hall is there, and there’s not a whole lot we can do about that. But my undying hope is that Maple Hall will be the last of it’s kind at ISU.

Dorms should be dorms — not hotel rooms, not prison cells, but dorms.

Let’s try to preserve at least one tradition at Iowa State.

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Sara Ziegler is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Sioux Falls, S.D. She is editor in chief of the Daily.