The Johns Hopkins University community on Thursday celebrated the grand opening of its $250 million Bloomberg Student Center with a day filled with speeches, tours, noshing and socializing not usually seen on the Homewood campus.
Approximately 400 students, faculty members and other Hopkins affiliates gathered in the atrium of the four-story building for an upbeat ceremony that showcased many of its features, from a black box theater and a media center to maker spaces and a state-of-the-art food hall.
In the process, they paid tribute to the 83-year-old benefactor for whom the student center is named, alumnus and former university board chair Michael Bloomberg. Although the building has gained a few nicknames since a soft opening on the first day of classes in August, including ‘The Stuce’ (short for student center) and ‘The Waffle,’ (either for the building’s design or one of the food vendors, Connie’s Chicken and Waffles), the one that seemed to go over best at the opening was an homage to the Class of 1964 engineering school grad who has reportedly given more than $4.5 billion to his alma mater: ‘The Mike.’
Hopkins President Ronald Daniels said that was his favorite.
“The Mike. The Mike,” Daniels said in his remarks. “It needs no further explanation.”
The event took place seven weeks after Hopkins began opening the building in phases to university affiliates – those with J cards that let them in. It still isn’t open to the general public, although Hopkins administrators say that will happen once the building is deemed fully operational.
The building is located at 3290 N. Charles St., just off the university’s main entrance drive and the grassy open space known as The Beach. It’s the first dedicated student center ever constructed on the Homewood campus – a place where students can spend time outside their classes and the library, on extracurricular activities. It was built to provide a central gathering spot for a university campus that never had a traditional student union, and to help Hopkins compete with ones that do. Its opening marked the end of more than four years of planning, fundraising and construction.
The student center was designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) and interior architect Rockwell Group, in collaboration with executive architect Shepley Bulfinch and landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates. Clark Construction Group was the lead contractor.
On Thursday, Daniels took the podium to the sounds of David Byrne’s Talking Heads playing “This Must Be the Place.”
Home is where I want to be
Pick me up and turn me round
I feel numb, born with a weak heart
I guess I must be having fun…
“As you’ve heard from our students, there is a magic to this place,” Daniels proclaimed. “Anything, anything, anything is possible here.”
Daniels noted that as far back as the 1880s, when Hopkins was still downtown, students expressed a desire for a place where they could “take a break from their books, a place to relax and unwind, a student center that was strictly for socializing and fun.”
In 1915, after the university moved to its present campus, Hopkins converted a horse stable, the Merrick Barn, to a soda fountain, and students put on shows there. Later, there was an effort to transform a former YMCA into a combination student union, café and bar.
Shortly after he became president, Daniels said, several “industrious students” laid a brick foundation outside Garland Hall, where the President’s office is, to erect “the student center that they yearned for, on the simple logic that if you weren’t going to build it for us, we’ll damn well do it ourselves.”
As it kicks off its 150th year, he said, the students’ dream has become a reality.
“Now we can finally say this is the place,” he said, echoing the Talking Heads lyrics. “This is the place that ends forever our students’ nearly 150-year-long campaign for a dedicated social space that was not a library. This is the place that is flexible and open, where no space is owned by any single student group but is used equally and owned by all. This is the place that will bring together students from all walks of life to perform, create, break bread and let their imaginations soar — as the Talking Heads say — with their feet on the ground, their heads in the sky.”
‘No better namesake’
He spoke directly to Bloomberg — founder of Bloomberg L. P. and Bloomberg Philanthropies and 108th mayor of New York City – praising him for his “transformative leadership.” Among Bloomberg’s gifts to Hopkins are $1.8 billion in 2018 for undergraduate financial aid, making the university “need-blind” and “loan-free” for low- and middle-income students, and $1 billion in 2024 for graduate student aid, primarily at Hopkins’ School of Medicine.
“Mike, I can think of no better namesake for this place,” he said. “Without your extraordinary vision, our students would still be advocating for a place like this.”
Bloomberg followed Daniels as a speaker, saying the campus is very different from when he was a student.
“A lot has changed since I graduated in 1964,” he said. “Back then, having a student center, I don’t think seemed possible. I don’t think anybody even thought about one.”
At the same time, he said, “this university really does have ways of making the possible happen.”
He praised Daniels for “taking a phenomenal university and making it even better” and for guiding Hopkins through “so many milestones, including the one that we are celebrating today.”
He said he thinks Hopkins now has “the greatest and most beautiful student center” of all.
$1000 tuition
Bloomberg took some time to reminisce about his years at Hopkins.
“I don’t know how I ever got in,” he said. “I don’t know how I ever got to graduation. I’m glad I did.”
He recalled that his college job as a student was to guard the parking lot outside the Hopkins Club for $35 a week. While that was “a lot of money in those days,” he said, the real benefit was that “I could go into the kitchen and have whatever they had on the menu for dinner. I ate so much better than any of my fraternity brothers. For a kid who almost never went to a restaurant growing up, it really was the ultimate in fine dining.”
He said he’s happy that several of the food vendors in the student center “are run by members of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business Program,” a business and management education program created to prepare the next generation of entrepreneurs.
When he was at Hopkins, Bloomberg said, “we had one dining hall and that’s about it. I do remember going through the line and you would say, ‘I want bacon, eggs and cheese with peanut butter on one side and jam on the other,’ and the woman would say ‘Here!’ It really wouldn’t take more than that, and the food tasted like it didn’t take more than that. But somehow or other I kept growing.”
As far as grades were concerned, he confessed, others did better than he did.
“My academic record, just so you’ll know, was in high school, college and graduate school, I always made the top half of the class possible,” he quipped.
Bloomberg said he was able to attend Hopkins because he had a National Defense student loan for $1,000, which “almost covered” his tuition.
“I think my freshman year was the first time…tuition went over $1000. It’s a little higher now, isn’t it?”
What is the stated tuition rate now? he asked.
“It’s higher than $1,000,” a woman from the audience called out.
“The National Defense loan that I got was created in the wake of Sputnick, when the United States was losing the space race,” he said. “So I guess I should thank the Soviet Union for putting me through college and sending me on my way to capitalism.”
Giving back
Bloomberg said it bothered him that Hopkins didn’t have a student union, a place that provided a transition between town and gown.
As Hopkins grew into a global institution with campuses in Washington, Italy and China, he said, “one piece we were always missing was a student center at the heart of Homewood, one that connected us to Charles Street and to the rest of the great city of Baltimore.”
He praised Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott for his efforts to fight crime and increase the tax base and population.
“I think it’s fair to say that our mayor here deserves a lot of credit,” he said. “Baltimore has reduced the crime rate dramatically and is trying to put back businesses and people who want to come and live here…so congratulations to your mayor.”
Early on, he said, he made a practice of giving back to the university for what it gave him.
“The year I graduated, I sent the university a check for $5,” he said. “It wasn’t much but the dollar amount didn’t matter. The most important thing is that I recognized that I owed something back to Hopkins and I would owe it for the rest of my life.”
He said he hopes students enjoy and benefit from the Bloomberg Student Center.
“Hopefully this will be a place that’s better than anything I had,” he said. “Just don’t put your shoes up on the furniture.”
