Bye-Bye to Beecher Hall From: University Currents April 7, 2000 By: Mary Bridget Reilly Phone: (513) 556-1824 Photo by: Colleen Kelley Archive: Campus News Updated News Available Beecher Hall closes its colorful history - one that includes the passions of protest, the passage of playing children as well as the purely comic - in mid-April as the last of the Enrollment Services staff pack up and head to Edwards Center the weeks of April 10 and 17. The Beecher site will become home to a new Center for Enrollment Services scheduled for completion in July 2002. For many of these final movers, Beecher has served as the only UC "home" they've known throughout their university careers. For instance, Jim Williams, director of Enrollment Services, has spent all of his 21 years at UC within Beecher's walls, and admits, "I will miss it, but I am sentimental. I cry every time I trade in a good, old car. It's the same with Beecher. It's a nasty, old building, but it is home, ghosts and all." Williams affirms that there are, indeed, ghosts. "There is no question . . . I don't like to be alone in here after dark. I'll be here by myself, and I'll hear voices out in the hall. I'll stick my head out, but there's no one there," he said, adding optimistically, "I think the ghosts will go to Edwards and come back with us to the new building." Bill Doering, director of cash management and banking in the Office of the Treasurer, reports that four-legged intruders are far more numerous than ghostly ones. "The squirrels ate the window sashes routinely. Squirrels would come right up to people at their desks. People would just scream, and then the squirrels would do their 'nature's business' right on people's desks. ...," Doering stated. Beecher is also known on campus as one of the sites that, in the 1970s, saw moments of tension. Both University Registrar Lynn Barber and Steve West, chief investment accountant in the Treasurer's Office, recall the student unrest in the wake of the May 4, 1970, shooting at Kent State. Beecher and the Administration Building were the site of sit-ins at the time. West recalled being told to guard the door on Beecher's ground level. He was fortunate. Student protesters did enter the building, but on the other side, and staged a "sit-in" in the registrar's office, which Barber thinks was selected because "the space was bigger. They could fit in more students." One long-time Beecher tenant who won't be finding a new home on campus nor returning to the Beecher site in 2002 is Associate Director of Student Financial Aid Alex Murdoch who is closing his UC career and retiring after 22 years. "It's a funky old building. I'm glad I don't have to move from my UC home. I'm sad to see it go . . . "