In 1988, NIU mapped out its plans for the university’s future, and in many cases, it followed through. Martin Luther King Memorial Commons was built, taking the place of metered parking spots. The sidewalks and bridges around Watson Creek have been updated and improved. And to top it all off, a new College of Business and a new arena, aka the Convocation Center, have made the campus more desirable to prospective students.

So with all of these improvements, why haven’t the residence halls been worked on more fervently?

In Friday’s story “Grant renovations still on NIU’s wish list,” Bob Albanese, the director of Finance and Facilities, said every year there is discussion about what to do with Grant Towers. However, there have been no set-in-stone plans to give it a makeover.

This is something that needs to be rectified, and it needs to be rectified soon.

When prospective students visit NIU, they want to see where they might live for the first year of their college careers. Thus, campus tour guides take these impressionable visitors to one of the residence halls – often Grant Towers.

No new student is going to be impressed by the age and wear and tear the towers show. The towers were built in the late 1960s, and little has been done to improve them since.

The last major residence hall renovations were done about six or seven years ago – to Stevenson Towers, where new students rarely dwell.

One of the reasons Albanese gave for the Grant renovations being pushed back was the new state mandate requiring sprinklers in all dormitories by 2013, which could be quite a pricey endeavor.

While the mandate might put a damper on renovation plans, there is no reason it should push the plans back even more. If the university can figure out ways to fund revamping University Circle, it certainly can find ways to fund residence hall renovations.

Even if the renovations are done floor by floor over a period of years, at least there would be a sense of accomplishment and another item to cross off the wish list. Then students might even fight over the chance to live in the refurbished rooms.