You know that tall building on the far east side of campus that looks like it is in the middle of a war zone? The big brown one that is circled by the chain link fence. The one buried in various 2-by-4’s, cigarette butts, empty McDonald’s cups and mud. The one guarded during the day by construction workers (that’s an ancient Greek word for “smokers in hard hats”).

I am referring to Maple Hall. It is being extensively renovated this year to create new, bigger dorm rooms and some suite-style rooms as well. When I say renovated, what I mean is gutted out. They are taking down every wall that won’t bring all of Maple down with it.

When they’re done, there will be a computer lab on every other floor, semi-private bathrooms for some rooms and garbage and recycling chutes so the residents don’t even have to deal with their own garbage (that’s going to be a little too easy for the weekend pukers, if you ask me).

This massive project is just the first step of a grand mission that is called (drum roll, please) the “Master Plan.” This plan, developed by residence hall top dogs like Randy Alexander, Ginny Arthur and other various university and residence hall administrators, is a comprehensive plan on where the residence halls of Iowa State are heading.

To start out with, I really think calling it the “Master Plan” has a high-comedic value. When I heard the name of this plan, my first thought was of this grand, university wide secret manifesto authored by several old, white men (possibly Sicilian Mafia members or maybe East Coast mob types) sitting around puffing on cigars in a smoke-filled room.

I figured it called for not only the destruction and renovation of certain buildings, but also the assassination of important student leaders, the corruption of our athletic programs to make them more competitive, and the creation of a mind-control device to be located in the Campanile. When I found out otherwise, I was a little disappointed, I must admit.

But still, the Master Plan is a pretty big deal. It will change the way people live here at Iowa State. Like most of my columns, it has many good points and at least as many equally bad ones.

The central idea of the Master Plan is to adjust the university-sponsored living spaces to what students currently want. According to the director of the residence halls, Randy Alexander, a survey was done last year by the university to see where students would rather live if they could live in any style of living space.

It was revealed that in comparison to the students desires, ISU was short nearly 2,000 spaces in apartment and suite-style living spaces and had an excess of 3,000 dorm-style rooms.

I hope they didn’t spend a whole lot of money on the survey because I could have told them that for half the dough, maybe even for a quarter of it. If you ask a student if they’d rather live in an apartment, a suite or a dorm, how many people are going to answer dorm? Probably enough to almost fill half of Fisher-Nickell.

Nobody really likes dorms, but people still live there without any excessive bitching. Sure, they’re usually cramped into a 9-by-14 foot room with some other bozo and have to choke down food service three times a day, but all in all they’re living the easy life.

They have no meals to make and no messes to clean up. When they puke in the bathroom, the custodians clean it up. When they lock themselves out of their rooms, their resident assistant lets them in. They get The Des Moines Register for free. They have the opposite sex right there at their disposal (that’s probably not the right word for it, but you get the drift).

And since when did the university suddenly decide that it wanted to cater to the students every whim? I’m sure there have been many requests to make Physics 221 tests easier, but I don’t see any action on that front in the near future.

My point is that although it may look like the university has its heart in the right place on this one, I still have my suspicions. Some tenets of the master plan seem to have real merit, such as extending food service to allow you to buy things at the Memorial Union on your ISU Card and to eat your meals at hours other than those when the cafeteria is churning out its slop.

But the fact that all of these new apartments and suites are going to cost a hell of a lot is what worries me. Do you realize that there is a 5 percent room and board increase planned well into the 21st century to pay for these new renovations? And are you aware that anyone living in these new apartments and suites will pay higher room rates than their dorm-living counterparts?

Plus, when old dumpy Towers are being knocked down, nobody sheds a tear nor should they. But according to a time table released by the university that was given to the Inter-Residence Hall Association, the demolition of at least parts of Friley and Helser is just around the corner, starting possibly as soon as this summer.

I don’t like that one bit. Isn’t Friley one of ISU’s claims to fame, with all that “second-largest continuous dorm in the US” line that everyone gets at orientation? That is a building with some major history, and knocking it down so some students can live in a suite instead of a dorm seems like a disservice to the students rather than a service.

But perhaps I am being too hard on the department of residence and the university. They at least appear to be moving in the right direction. I do think that building more apartments and suites is a good move. However, watch this progress with an eagle eye. Don’t wake up one morning and look around and think, “I’m broke and everything is completely devoid of history, but damn is it great having my own sink.”

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David Roepke is a sophomore in journalism and mass communication from Aurora.