A new Community Engaged Learning (CEL) course is set to be offered this fall, with Assistant Dean of Student Living and Wellness and Director of Student Conduct Rich Horowitz leading the construction of eight new Terrace Apartments with select Vassar students. The program—fast-tracked by administrative officials after groups of all rising-seniors failed to secure Terrace Apartments of their own—will be cross-listed as both an art and physical education course.
The program was outlined in an email from the Office of Community-Engaged Learning on March 28. Notably, “students who participate in the program will receive a full unit of credit, rather than the customary half-credit, due to the intense physical labor the project’s timeline demands.” Gaining entrance to the opportunity is expected to be competitive. “Admission to the program will be determined by previous experience in construction, specifically roofing and plumbing.” Interested applicants are instructed to join Horowitz’s Instagram Live on Wednesday, April 31, where he will interview applicants in real-time while consulting blueprints by his fireplace.
The planned buildings will occupy the hill directly behind Baldwin Hall, a choice which excited Didi Fraus ’26. “I’m physically sick all the time, so the convenience of Baldwin being right by my bedside speaks to me.” Fraus intends to participate in the project, partially to ensure she will secure a spot in an apartment her senior year: “Rich let me call dibs,” she said. Horowitz denied this claim.
Vassar’s new stained glass organization, Glassar, will be creating eight individual glassworks to display in each house. The works are conceptualized as one musical octave, with each window representing a note in a C major scale. Fraus intends to live in House C (named for its corresponding note) but was unaware which House C she would be occupying. A traditional C Major scale possesses both an initial and final C, which Fraus was unaware of because she “detests music and all its listeners.”
Vassar’s art department expressed confusion at the decision to cross-list the opportunity with the program. In correspondence with The Miscellany News, an unnamed source lamented the decision to approve the program without consulting the department chair beforehand. “The choice to chug along with this decision at lightning speed before communicating with us is atrocious. It is an embarrassment to this institution’s core tenets.” The department also took issue with the contracting of Glassar instead of letting a course be constructed in-house. “How dare they take this from us,” the email reads, in the font Papyrus.
The finished living spaces will alleviate future classes from struggling to receive housing outside of the dorms, information that sent the “Vassar College Parents” Facebook group alight. “It’s about time they listen to us,” Melinda Jefferies P’26 exclaimed in a post. “It goes to show how powerful parents grouping together is.” Jefferies, a Western Massachusetts resident who later expressed in a phone interview her desire to be appointed to the Board of Trustees, says she is just beginning to utilize the group’s sway. “Soon we will replace the deans of the college with concerned parents. They will be the first legion to fall. Then the president. And, finally, the students.”