Divinity Group Opposes Dorm

A group of Divinity School students has begun a campaign asking that the University reverse its plans to build a new dormitory, Rockefeller Hall, at the School.

A leaflet circulated yesterday by the group argues that the dormitory "creates pressures which increase the probability of [University] expansion occuring."

The building is to be located just north of Andover Hall, on what is now a 40-car parking lot. It will house 39 students. The leaflet, which is signed by six Divinity students, argues that destruction of the parking spaces will force the University to seek parking space elsewhere, and that the added capacity of the Divinity School will only work to increase the school's enrollment.

A spokesman for the group of six, Wendell Wallach, first year Divinity student, said yesterday that he estimated that the group's position had the support of about 30 students at the school. "The Divinity School Community," an informal assembly of student, faculty, and staff of the school, is expected to take a vote today on the position the group expressed in its leaflet, Wallach said.

The group's leaflet also argues that the Divinity School has more pressing educational needs than a new building. It states that a new dormitory would isolate students from the world, and that the School "should definitely not help give respectability to the Rockefeller name by memorializing it."