Last Twitch of Dormzilla’s Tail

The housing advocacy organization Sustainable University Now (SUN) filed legal papers on UCSB this week, charging campus administrators have failed to comply with the state’s Public Records Act by withholding access to internal campus documents relating to now-shelved plans hatched by UCSB Chancellor Henry Yang and the late billionaire investor Charles Munger to build a massive student dorm that would have housed 3,500 students. 

That project, known officially as Munger Hall and later dubbed Dormzilla, drew national scorn and notoriety when it came out that the majority of dorm rooms had no windows but instead video simulations. 

Dick Flacks, a former UCSB sociology professor and the moving force behind SUN, said Yang and the campus chose at some point not to pursue smaller and more numerous dorm housing alternatives, opting instead to go for a grand slam with Munger Hall. 

“That decision had serious consequences,” Flacks said. “We want to see the planning documents, communications paper trail, the e-mails reflecting the thought process out which that decision emerged.” 

Flacks said the request for documents was filed with the campus three to four years ago. To date, he said, SUN has received “a few snippets” but has been told instead “there are no relevant documents that pertain to the request you have made.” The campus, he said, never asserted the documents were confidential or provided any justification for their being off-limits. As of deadline, the campus had not seen the filing to comment on it. 

Flacks and SUN have also asked for any documents that detail the campus’s decision to pursue a private developer as a partner for the proposed Ocean Road housing project for faculty and staff. Flacks has long opposed the inclusion of a private developer, arguing that the profit requirements involved would be at odds with efforts to create below-market affordable housing, both rental and ownership. 

Last year, the private developer selected by the campus for the project bowed out for unspecified reasons. The speculation has been that the affordability constraints imposed were incompatible with the industry-norm profit margins. 

The campus has asserted in the past that the Ocean Road project was a private development and that the documents sought were not bound by the Public Records Act. 

More broadly, SUN has been arguing that UCSB and Chancellor have failed to abide by the terms of a Long-Range Development Plan — adopted in 2010 — to build 5,000 new units of student housing and 1,800 for faculty and staff. To date, Flacks stated, UCSB has provided only 1,500 new student units, while adding 5,000 new students. 

“This is a public institution,” he stated, “but so many of the decisions have been made in secret. We should have access to the documents that show how these decisions were made.”