New Year, New Campus:Boley Hall, Mayberry and Dunn Dining Halls get a much needed face lift

Students arrived on campus for the start of the fall semester to find that Southern had been busy during the summer. Namely, several buildings on campus have been cleaned, upgraded, and improved in a series of renovations. The three most obvious cases being both dining halls, Mayberry and Dunn, along with one of the mixed-coed dormitories, Boley Hall.
The two dining halls have received slight, but very obvious, and especially in Dunn’s case, very necessary improvements. Both dining halls are sporting new lighting, artwork, and signs to go along with new furniture. Dunn took the new furniture look to the extreme, completely replacing all the old, all plastic chairs with new, stylish metal and wood chairs with matching wood tables. Dunn is also featuring a new, raised island counter that completes the new look and feel of the old dining hall. Additionally, Dunn has had its ventilation system reworked to improve the air flow of both air conditioning and heating.
Mayberry has also adopted the new metal and wood chairs, opting to replace the high top tables and chairs with a countertop along the windows. Mayberry, particularly, has benefited from the new lighting with the room looking seemingly bigger and noticeably brighter.
The Associate Vice-Chancellor of Student Affairs, Anthony T. Jackson, credits the students with having the vision for the look and feel of the two dining halls, “If the students were not involved in the process, then I don’t think that it would have been as successful as it is.” Both dining halls feature new signs indicating the various dining options within each dining hall. Jackson heavily credits the students with embodying what it means to be a Southern University student, “they [the students] came up with the names of the new areas, the robes, the color schemes…we just tried to change it up to make sure that it was something that the students wanted.
Over the past two years, various dormitories around campus have had incremental improvements in the form of new furniture, flooring, and/or air conditioning units. Boley Hall had seen bits and pieces of these incremental changes throughout that time, but this summer brought with it a complete renovation with the rooms receiving new, laminate wood flooring, air conditioning units, vents, and outlets. The bathrooms in each room also received upgrades in the form of new tiling, sinks, and a hotter shower through the improved heating system.
Boley Hall is one of the cheaper on-campus housing options at Southern University, thus making it a popular housing option among upperclassmen and returning students, “The renovations make the room and bathroom brighter with the light color furniture,” said, resident of Boley, Angelique McClellan.
In the wake of these improvements, Director of Residence Life & Housing Tracie Abraham would like to know how satisfied students are with the changes and what other changes should be made, “I would love to hear from any of the students to know if they like it,” said Abraham.
These renovations are just the start of a broader plan to continue the improvements across the various buildings on Southern’s campus. It isn’t a secret that some of the buildings on Southern’s campus are old and decrepit, so these renovations are just the first step of the process.