Pioneer Hall, the aging yet shining gem at the heart of Linfield, has residents once more. Both the original Linfield building and the host of many ghost stories, Pioneer Hall and its tall wooden doors have opened for student use outside of the classrooms located on its bottom floor.
In contrast, Potter, historic in its own right, will not be open for residents in the 2024-2025 academic year.
“Initially, during the COVID years, Pioneer and Potter were both closed down. Last year, Potter was open and Pioneer wasn’t because we needed more male bed spaces,” said Geoffrey Rath, assistant director of housing operations. “Potter has more male floors, and Pioneer, to my knowledge, has always been a women-only hall. We had the reverse problem this year.”
Rath explained how this was the driving force behind the decision. But, the building won’t just stay empty. It also already houses the school’s education facilities which include a preschool.
New to this year, the building has been effectively given to conference and event services. Their plan? Use the building as a residence hall for incoming parents, players, and visitors over the academic year and summer.
“There has been a lot of interest from the conference team and from their clients to have clients come to campus during the academic year, but they haven’t had a space for that,” Rath said. “ We said ‘Oh, we can make our housing needs fit and let Potter go to conference (and event servic
es) for the year to see if this works for them,’ which also helped the decision (to close Potter).”
One use-case scenario for Potter is housing for parents, said Rath. Parents can rent out rooms in Potter when visiting to stay on campus rather than a hotel. Another use is to house visiting sports teams and their coaches.
Rath said Potter could reopen for student residents, but cautioned that Potter would only open again for resident overflow.
“I’d love to see Potter open again, but it’s ‘I only want to use it if we can fill it.’ One RA (residence advisor) and three residents isn’t a good community.”
Pioneer is a similar story, just the reverse. While it is the oldest building on campus, staff say Pioneer is ready for residents.
“The students that live in Pioneer, I would think, are some of the luckiest,” said Alison Horn, sssociate vice president of facilities and administration. “Other than it’s a climb, I’ve heard it’s excellent.”
One Pioneer resident agreed with some caveats.
“Pioneer is a nice building, so at first glance it’s great. The pipes are fairly old, and when I was living there before they fixed the issue, the kitchen water was brown. The water would also take forever to warm up,” said the resident. “Also, not everyone has screens in their windows, and a bat got in, so we had to chase the bat out of the building. Other than that, it’s a nice place to live. The vaulted ceilings are nice, and they repainted the walls recently.”
Horn was unsure about the last time Pioneer was updated, but that facilities do “periodically” renovate the building and that it is in good shape for students.
