Quinnipiac University opened up its newest residence hall on Mount Carmel Campus, The Grove, this past August as part of the South Quad project.

The Grove houses first-years alongside upperclassmen — that serve as “mentors” in the building for their handful of first-year students.

And since the start of the project, returning students weren’t thrilled about the new building. When the residence hall finally got its name, after the Pine Grove that used to stand in that exact area, students took to Instagram comments to express their distaste.

“‘embody the legacy’ of 65 massive trees, by replacing them with concrete and plumbing and steel,” one user wrote.

“Cool but you guys still cut down an entire ecosystem for your profit,” another wrote.

When the 417-bed hall finally opened at the start of the Fall 2024 semester, all seemed well. The Grove boasts rooms full of new furniture, private bathrooms for its occupants and massage chairs — features that one would not find in the other first-year residence halls.

However, a month and a half into the semester, all that seemed well no longer does.

Firstly, first-year students had to apply to live in The Grove. The application laid out requirements for living in the new building, including a community service project which students would work on throughout their first year. This is the focus of the QU 100: The Grove Living Learning Experience course. This course counts for no credit.

“We did, over the summer, (an) application, which (had) questions like, ‘if you’re in The Grove, what kind of project would you do?’” said Jake Marino, a first-year finance major.

Some first-year students found out about another factor of living in The Grove during their move-in: the mentoring program.

“So I did know about the project, although I didn’t know what I was going to be doing yet. I just knew that there was going to be one,” said Catherine Carl, a first-year marketing major. “I didn’t know about the mentor program. I found out move-in day that I had a mentor. She introduced herself to me.”

The mentor’s role is, in part, to help first-years with their projects. Mentors are sophomores, juniors and seniors who chose to live in the building to guide the students. Students like Carl knew about the project, but were unsure of the details.

Residents of the building take a “first year seminar class” related to one of four topics: the environmental sustainability, health and education, community engagement and equity and inclusion. These classes are supposed to “Tie their big idea with their academic journey,” according to Quinnipiac’s webpage on The Grove.

The FYS class, which all first-years take a variation of, counts for three credits. There are specific sections of the class that go hand-in-hand with the QU 100 course.

First-year students have support of their mentors and the professors of the FYS classes for their project. However, the parameters for it have been unclear to the professors as well.

“There seems to be no template, so professors are doing different things, and that’s creating anxiety with the students,” said Professor Wayne Lavender, a professor for one of The Grove FYS classes. “And having no template is a good and bad thing, because it allows creativity, allows us to do things, but the (creation of) anxiety is a bad thing.”

Professors have begun improvising the guidelines on the project in hopes that it would meet the unknown requirements.

“My (professor) even said ‘I don’t know what to tell you.’ He’s getting nothing about the project,” Marino said. “At this point, my (professor), a couple classes ago, put markers in front of us and was like, ‘instead of waiting for something be said, come up with your own project, and we’ll kind of push that, and we’ll look forward and see what happens.’”

Lavender has taken a different approach with his faculty affiliate for their theme, the environment. They have been working together to create an approach.

“I’m lucky just to be working with someone who’s organized, and we’re meeting and we’re getting it done, because we didn’t think we should wait much longer,” Lavender said. “It’s already halfway through the semester, so we so she and I really wanted to be on it, and I think the other ones are just waiting for instructions from above.”

Lavender has spoken to his students on how to approach the situation. Many of his students were anxious about the project.

“My impression (was) students were very upset back at the beginning of September because they had this project. They had no idea what it was,” Lavender said. “I think the first thing that we did in our theme was to have meetings with students and kind of calm them down and say, ‘Listen, you’ve got all these advantages of new dorm.’ We came up with listed 10 advantages to the new dorm.”

The students felt more comfortable about the project after Lavender spoke to them about this.

For students who have no direction about the project, it still sits at the back of their mind.

“The idea crossed my mind where we have nothing about the project now,” Marino said. “But what if they come up with it later, and then they push us to do it, and they expect us to do this whole project in the latter part of the year, when we didn’t get anything for the first half.”

Even though The Grove is the newest building on campus, a month and a half in problems already arose — from a broken AC a few weeks in, to broken bathrooms.

“We have a communal bathroom right outside of our door,” said Katarina DeWitt, a first-year journalism and media studies major. “One of the showers doesn’t have a drain in the room. And so the whole bathroom floods and, like, leaks into the hallway, but they closed it permanently in it, you can’t open it. So hopefully that’s not a problem anymore.”

Even though students have moved and lived in The Grove since August, the building didn’t get its official opening until Sept. 8, three weeks into students already living there.

“I think, like, because no one’s lived there yet, there’s minor details, like no drains, there’s nowhere to hang up your clothes in the shower stalls,” DeWitt said. “There’s little stuff that’s missing because no one’s been there (to) tested out. I see people, like, doing construction, patching up the wall and stuff like this already.”

The Chronicle reached out with questions to Sal Filardi, Quinnipiac’s vice president for facilities and capital planning, and has yet to receive a response.

“I can’t complain too much, because I know the other buildings have it so much worse,” DeWitt said.