Why are people talking about Faith and Jenkins?

by Rebekah Erway

Faith and Jenkins are two opposites on the dorm spectrum: one is the oldest dorm on campus, the other the newest. Faith (formally Faith Hall) originated over 50 years ago as a used Army barracks. The dorm was meant to be temporary housing but lasted for 58 years as a home for students on Cedarville’s campus.

Last year, the announcement officially came that Cedarville was going to tear Faith down before the start of the 2017-18 school year. This led to numerous puns about Cedarville losing its “faith,” but it was a well-merited change.

Faith is an older dorm and therefore not as structurally sound or mold-resistant as some of the other dorms. Also, for the past several years, one entire hall of the dorm has been empty. Faith occupants understood the situation but were disappointed at losing their chosen home.

Unexpectedly, the administration decided after the close of last school year to keep Faith partially open due to the need for housing caused by increased enrollment. Female students were offered a discounted room rate to live in the older dorm, and several chose to. However, before the administration announced the decision to keep Faith partially opened, the 2016-17 Faith residents chose other living areas, including the dorm built to compensate for the housing lost at Faith’s closing.

Enter Jenkins Hall, the newest dorm on campus. Jenkins was finished over the summer. It is named after Eleanor Jenkins, a wife of a trustee and a supporter of Cedarville who passed away in 2015.

Unlike Faith, Jenkins Hall is unit-style like Printy and Maddox but with a more open layout. The units have eight bedrooms each rather than the four in Maddox, and there is a larger unit lounge with a small microwave kitchenette.

The dorm only houses 64 women, so it’s the smallest dorm on campus and houses even fewer people than Faith. The size makes Jenkins more suited for a tight-knit community similar to the close community of Faith Hall.

As it is the newest dorm, you probably won’t have the opportunity to live in Jenkins in your first few years here (since upperclassmen choose rooms first), but you can make friends with some of the girls in there and go visit. Plus, during Campus Christmas at the end of the semester, all the dorms will be open for a while, so you can have a chance to stop by and see what it looks like. Jenkins is located between the townhouses and the Murphy-Rickard-West trio.

Faith is still located at the edge of campus, just before Alford Auditorium. Both dorms, as any dorm on campus, will have a distinct atmosphere based around the community of students who chose to live there. The still-standing Faith Hall contains a lot of Cedarville students’ memories, and Jenkins Hall is a blank slate that memories can be made on.

Rebekah Erway is a senior Christian education major and campus news editor for Cedars. She enjoys odd numbers, Oxford commas, and speaking in a British accent.