Dirty Dozen: Ranking 12 essential buildings at UNT
By: Matthew Brune, Shekinah Berry, Cheyenne Parish, Jake Gray
The upkeep of buildings has been a highly discussed issue on every college campus, but North Texas in particular is a campus with buildings varying in age in a drastic way. This leads to different experiences for students across the board and led us to ask, how is the university trying to keep these older buildings in quality shape? And how does the quality of living in the buildings rank when you stack 12 of the most talked about buildings up against each other?
Here, we do just that. We take our different feedback from talking to students, resident assistants, professors, and others and created a thorough ranking of these “Dirty Dozen” buildings. Some are new, some are old, but the quality, upkeep, and habitableness is what we’ll be ranking here from best to worst.
Let’s get started.
12. The Union
What else can you say about the Union that hasn’t already been said? The Union was opened in the spring of 2016 and has remained the premier building at North Texas. At every level there is a clean and pristine floor filled with useful stores or offices for students. From the dining options to mail pick up, to upstairs meeting rooms and study seats, there are options for every student at the Union.
It’s the central hub of campus, and it’s in good enough shape to house everyone who wants to come spend time there.
11. Business Leadership Building
Another fairly new building, the BLB houses the business school and has some of the nicest class rooms on campus. Lecture halls are spacious with two screens and help professors corral students.
There are multiple floors in the BLB and floors with computer labs, meeting rooms, and everything is in great shape.
10. Mean Joe Greene Hall
While Greene Hall has its fair share of issues as far as rooming goes, the exterior, lobby area, and the guest information area.
The rooms are small and a closet area takes up a lot of the room. Of course, small rooms are minuses for nearly every residence hall, but Greene compounds that with their amenities.
9. Rawlins Hall
The rooms are all going to be the same below unless noted and Rawlins is similar. However, Rawlins also has one of the better areas for art, music, and other recreation. It’s a fairly new building so that helps with the upkeep as problems are far less than the buildings below, but normal issues persist like air conditioning and laundry.
8. Victory Hall
As the residence hall for freshmen athletes, there is obviously an added emphasis on keeping the young athletes in tip-top shape and it shows. One of the biggest pluses for Victory students is the best dining hall on campus just down the elevator. People travel to Victory form across campus to eat their food because it is that good and different from the places below on their meal plan.
Of course, the hall is isolated from campus, being near Apogee Stadium, but the building itself and housing did not warrant many complaints. One of the complaints we got a lot of was the humidity and the mold. This starts to become a bigger problem, but it’s worth noting here.
7. Traditions Hall
This is a pretty standard hall, but it is nicer with its rooming situation because it is also for upperclassmen. The exterior is nicer as well with a walkway and plants and benches, so there’s not too much to complain about here besides the age of the building and the upkeep which we’ve heard to be struggling more with every passing year.
6. Bruce Hall
The best thing Bruce Hall has is a good cafeteria on campus for freshman and others with a meal plan. The rooms are less than adequate, constantly challenged with problems such as no hot water, flooding, thin walls, just to get the list started.
5. GAB
Not a residence hall, but also barely a building worth holding educational classes in. The GAB is old and needs to be renovated or removed entirely, We talked to professors and students who have both been in awe with the lack of advancements or efforts in keeping this building as one of the better buildings both on its exterior and interior.
The GAB is near the heart of campus and an eye soar for anyone who passes by, and the inside isn’t much more appealing. You have to wonder if there are already plans in place to replace it.
4. West Hall
A very, very old building that allows you to hear everything going on around you due to the aging walls and interior. It does have a cafeteria so that helps the students inside, but the stairs and lobby areas need serious work in order to make them more usable in the future.
West Hall is certainly not the “Best Hall” despite its frequent claims.
3. Maple Hall
Maple really struggles to keep up with any of the newer buildings simply because students inside do not believe that there is an effort to keep it clean, updated, or any of the other synonyms of “nice”.
The carpet is dingy and hardly cleaned, the rooms are extremely uncomfortable, and issues hardly ever get fixed in a timely fashion.
2. Kerr Hall
The infamous Kerr Hall. Where to begin. For one, the rooms in Kerr legitimately feel like prison rooms with awful cracks and holes everywhere. Residents have complained about the lack of hot water or even warm water, then say that the lobby area is hardly hospitable. As one of the oldest buildings on campus, it’s not a surprise that common commodities like the elevator and washer/dryers are constantly broken.
More than anything, Kerr just feels old. There’s no other way to describe it. I’m sure it doesn’t help that Greene was just opened too for Kerr residents to gaze at as they return to their cell.
1. The College Inn
Not only is The College Inn an outdoor apartment complex, but there is a serious up-keeping problem according to multiple people that we have spoken to throughout this process. The first issue is the water. Drainage, water heat, and even the occasional inability to use water make a common need a variable in the living experience.
Furthermore, the humidity and lack of a quality A/C make way for humidity and mold in a very brief period of time. Everyone we were able to find said that they regretted the decision to live there, and yes it is a part of the student living sponsored by the campus.
Congrats College Inn, the horror stories we got from your residents clearly took the cake.