“The building was in bad state,” Terrence Lonam, president of the Mallet Assembly, said. “It had been built in the early ‘40s or ‘50s and through the continuous wear and tear it just wasn’t a good place to live anymore.”
The Mallet Assembly is now housed in the Highland apartments, located just off of Old Hackberry Lane.
“We needed to find a new location that would be hospitable as well as nurture the communal aspect that Mallet has grown to care about, and we found the Highlands because it gives us that aspect,” Lonam said. “We have space for all of the members, and we’ve been able to develop a community there that we might not have been able to had we moved to one of the bigger dorms like Ridgecrest or Riverside.”
The Mallet representatives are pleased with how the members are adjusting to the new living arrangements.
“I was really excited to see within the first week people hanging around outside in the breezeway rather than just sitting around their apartments,” Harrison Bennett, the minister of information for the Mallet Assembly, said. “I’d say the community aspect we had at Palmer has really transferred well over to the Highlands.”
However, members say there are some drawbacks to the move. Some traditions that the Mallet Assembly once held dear are now lost for the time being. One tradition includes the famous “stoop,” the stairs in front of Palmer where the members would hang out between classes and at night.
“Now we hang out in the breezeway,” Lonam said. “That’s the new stoop.”
Ethan Graham, a member and former interim officer of the Mallet Assembly, has reservations about the suite style of the Highland dorms.
“Palmer was a traditional dorm, and everyone’s rooms were right along the hall,” Graham said. “Here, with the apartment style, it could be easier to isolate yourself in the common areas or even the individual rooms, and the daily interaction we enjoyed at Palmer could be difficult to recreate.”
The Mallet Assembly does not plan on staying at the Highlands permanently. The group hopes to have secured a new location within the next four or five years, Lonam said.
“We’re in the process of negotiating with the housing administration,” he said. “We don’t want to get in to specifics, but there will always be a home for Mallet, and we are so thankful to have the support of the University and the housing administration as well as the help to accommodate our needs.”
