The Huntington News January 30, 2020
The independent student newspaper of the Northeastern community
@HuntNewsNU
STILL HOUSES STUDENTS AFTER TWO YEARS By Savannah Miller | News Correspondent
Students were placed in the Midtown Hotel, despite past assurances that the hotel would no longer be a housing option. About 80 upperclass students coming back from co-op and study abroad were temporarily housed there in January. Northeastern first used the Midtown Hotel for student housing in the spring semester of 2018, when 60 N.U.in students were placed there. Since then, the hotel has been home to more N.U.in students, as well as firstyears in the ContiNUe program, transfer students and upperclassmen returning from co-op or study abroad. “The university leased additional beds at the Midtown for the month of January for about 80 upperclass students assigned there temporarily while they are waiting for space on campus that may open up as a result of cancellations or withdrawals,” university spokesperson Mike Woeste wrote in a Jan. 27 email to The News. “Most of the students who stayed at the Midtown have now received their assignments and the university has provided moving support for them over the past couple of weeks.” When students were first housed in the hotel, there were concerns over distance from campus, as well as lack of amenities such as Northeastern WiFi and laundry machines. However, students who were housed there temporarily in January had few complaints about the logistics of living in the hotel, including locations and accommodations. “I have no issue, it’s pretty cool,” said Justin Harvey, a third-year business administration major who temporarily lived in Midtown until on-campus housing opened up. “I’d be fine living here the whole semester.”
In a January 2018 town hall, Francis Bourgeois, the director of Northeastern Housing Services at the time, said that housing students in the Midtown Hotel was a “one-semester thing,” and that “there are no plans or discussions as we sit here now, at least at my level, for Midtown to be an option in the future.” However, Northeastern has continued to use the Midtown Hotel for student housing, both temporary and semester-long. Zhanna Sheyner, a first-year bioengineering major and ContiNUe student, said she likes the space at the hotel. “I have a single with a lot of space, which is better than a lot of the other first-year housing options,” Sheyner said. The hotel’s distance from campus raises concerns for some students, as it sits just beyond the Symphony MBTA stop. “The walk is inconvenient, but you just have to give yourself five extra minutes in the morning,” said Sam Sagherian, a first-year mechanical engineering major in the ContiNUe program. “It’s a really good location, we’re so close to the Pru[dential Center].” Security is more relaxed at the hotel compared to residence halls, without a requirement to check in with a proctor to access the building or sign in guests. “I haven’t had any problems with the lower security,” Sheyner said, mentioning the ease with which she can come and go with friends. Meghan Barber, a second-year biochemistry major, chose to live in the Midtown Hotel as a resident assistant after being in the ContiNUe program during her first year.
“I wanted to be a kind of role model for other ContiNUe students because I was in the program last year,” Barber said. Most of her residents are students in the ContiNUe program, as well as temporary residents arriving on campus from N.U.in. “Spots open up for N.U.in kids so they move around.” ContiNUe students live together in the Midtown Hotel as part of a living learning community during their first year, with the option to commute if they live nearby. “They try to make it a tight-knit group of kids for connections later on,” Sagherian said of ContiNUe students being housed together. The ContiNUe program’s admissions website states that “beginning in the Summer I 2020 term, students may participate in the housing process for transfer students, for which university housing is not guaranteed,” raising questions about the program’s future use of the Midtown Hotel. A university spokesperson did not respond to request for comment on this. Efforts are being made to alleviate housing pressure at Northeastern. LightView apartments, which opened this past summer, added 825 living spaces for Northeastern students. American Campus Communities Inc., the company which owns and operates LightView, is collaborating with Northeastern again to build a new 26-story mixed-use building at 840 Columbus Ave., with construction starting in 2021. For the students housed in Midtown temporarily, their stay at the hotel has ended. “All undergraduate students were able to successfully move into their assigned housing,” Woeste wrote.
Photos by Kelly Thomas | Art by Devin Raynor
Northeastern announces new campus in Portland, Maine By Lucy Gavin Deputy Campus Editor Northeastern announced Monday that it is launching a new graduate campus in Portland, Maine, a coastal town approximately 108 miles north of Boston. The new campus, called the Roux Institute, will specialize in digital technology and life sciences, with an emphasis on artificial intelligence and machine learning. The institute, which is slated to open this spring, is taking on 10
corporate partners to develop the curricula and fund research and innovation. The partners include Bangor Savings Bank, IDEXX, The Jackson Laboratory, L.L. Bean, MaineHealth, PTC, Thornton Tomasetti, Tilson, Unum and WEX. “We can’t do it alone. We need, from day one, the institutions, the companies, the enterprises to be at the table,” President Joseph E. Aoun said at the official launch announcement Jan. 27. “Here, from the get-go, we have our founding partners … from day one, we are going to work
together to establish what is needed in terms of talent, to create curricula and programs to meet those needs.” Aoun also spoke about the possibility of collaborations with other academic institutions such as the University of Maine. “With the University of Maine, we are talking about the possibility of articulation agreements that will allow the students at the University of Maine to be with us for a couple of years and vice versa, to have faculty working together. We have research partnerships as we speak
that are being formed,” Aoun said. The campus is being funded by technology entrepreneur David Roux and his wife, Barbara Roux, who have committed $100 million to the Roux Institute. The project has been in the works for multiple years, with Northeastern signing on in the past year. Roux, a Maine native, created the institute in an effort to stimulate the state’s economy and bring more technological innovation to the region. “Our plan is to focus exclusively on the practical application of
artificial intelligence and machine learning on digital engineering and life sciences,” Roux said at the launch. “It’s a narrow but incredibly powerful target that we’re aiming at, which happens to represent the most important growth engine in the economy.” This is Northeastern’s latest endeavor to expand the university’s national and global presence, joining its satellite campuses in London, Toronto, Vancouver, Seattle, the San Francisco Bay Area, Nahant, Burlington and Charlotte.