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SVA Students Want Their Ugly Dorm Back

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Do Lower East Siders care about college students invading their neighborhood? Better yet, do they care which college students doing the invading? Probably not, but the current dust-up over skyline blight 101 Ludlow Street, aka Desert Storm, is still a fun one. We've been a bit obsessed with the School of Visual Arts' towering new dorm, probably because everything else that has recently grown this tall on the LES has been a boutique hotel or luxury apartment building. But not Desert Storm, which has more in common with Rikers Island than the Thompson LES. (Though the deck is snazzy.) Now SVA has invited both Baruch and something called The King's College to share in the spoils of the Ludlow Residence, and some SVA students are pretty ticked off.

There's an online petition floating around (up to 200 signatures!) asking SVA to save its Ludlow dorm and another one on 10th Street from the evil influences of others. It reads:

The administration of SVA have decided due to budgeting to rent more than 75% of the Ludlow building and ALL of the 10th street building to other colleges. Not only will this considerably downsize SVA's on campus community but the jobs of beloved staff members (including student RA's) are on the line. This decision was not passed through residence life at all and it was just decided upon by the higher ups. As students of SVA (even students who do not currently live in residence halls) we have power to try and end this, Everyone at SVA has great memories and made many friends due to the residence halls here, we want these opportunities to still be open to us and not throw away the communities everyone has worked so hard to build.Maybe they'll pull a New School and take the building by force! We can dream, can't we?
· Save SVA's 10th Street and Ludlow Buildings [iPetitions]
· SVA Dorm coverage [Curbed]