College Columbaria
by Steve Goldstein
MAY 18, 2009 TAGS:
From alma mater to infinitas.
Among colleges and universities there is a subtly growing trend of offering final campus resting places for faculty, alumni and their loved ones. As cremation becomes a more widely accepted alternative to below-ground burial, the necropolis of choice in higher education is something called a columbarium -- a memorial wall with niches for urns filled with ashes.
The word columbarium is derived from the Latin for a nesting box for pigeons. For a few thousand dollars, a dovecote for human remains can be purchased at some of the nation's leading universities, and some lesser-known institutions of higher learning.
Who knows what effect this might have on the already intense pressure to get into college, now realizing that one might be there forever?
How did a four-year experience become something so much more permanent?
As more than one college administrator noted, our increasingly mobile and rootless society no longer lends itself to family burial plots or homely, tree-shaded churchyard cemeteries. Alums are often wont to reminisce that college was the best time of their lives.
"I think this satisfies a real emotional need," said Richard Hesel of the Baltimore-based Art and Science Group, which provides marketing consultation to institutions of higher education. "The experience in those four years is probably the closest thing they've had to real community in their lives."
The U.S. Naval Academy, which has probably the oldest college facility, created a columbarium of 2,448 niches 22 years ago. Other schools picked up the idea, including three institutions in Virginia: the University of Richmond, the University of Virginia, and Sweet Briar College; as well as Chapman University in Orange, Calif., and Centre College in Danville, Ky.
The Citadel, the University of Notre Dame and Hendrix College in Conway, Ark., all have such memorials under construction or in the planning stages.
Notre Dame calls its above-ground burial ground the "Coming Home" Initiative for Christian burial, no doubt a perfect complement to the famous Touchdown Jesus statue adorning its hallowed football stadium.
With rising college costs seemingly as inevitable as death and taxes, why not combine two of the three?
College columbaria may hold several hundred to several thousand niches, which sell for between $1,500 and $3,000 and hold two urns. A recent newspaper editorial somewhat cynically referred to the practice as a tasteless marketing venture.
"This is really not about fund-raising," said J. Timothy Cloyd, the president of Hendrix, a small liberal arts college. "There are a lot easier ways to raise money."
"I don't think anyone wanted to make a killing, so to speak," said Dr. Dearing W. Johns, a cardiologist and associate professor at Virginia's medical school who once chaired the cemetery committee.
"The thinking of some people was that it could serve a fund-raising purpose, but most of the money goes to construction and maintenance," she explained. "We haven't marketed it."
Virginia's columbarium is an outgrowth of the university's cemetery, founded in 1828. When the cemetery was full, Leigh B. Middleditch, an alumnus of both the undergraduate and law schools who wanted to be buried at the school, proposed that a columbarium be built, and raised the financing with help from friends.
A first phase, with 180 niches, was completed in 1991 and all but one has been sold for $1,800 each. The second phase of 180 niches is completed, and 45 have been spoken for at $2,500 each. A third phase is likely to be built, said Dr. Johns, who said that she herself has reserved a niche because "I feel a strong attachment to the school."
Virginia first thought to sell the niches to its faculty, but has since extended the offer to staff and alumni.
"For faculty, this is their career and their life," said Dr. Johns. "When you've devoted yourself to something, you may want to be part of it always. These bonds are forming around universities, the way they used to form around churches."
At Hendrix, chaplain Wayne Clark initially proposed that a labyrinth be built in the middle of campus near the burial ground of a former college president, to serve as a place of meditation. Clark then persuaded Cloyd that a columbarium would be a perfect complement "to meet a great need due to the mobility and fractured nature of our society."
Cloyd convinced his 40 member board of trustees. "Twelve of them are clergy, and they got it immediately, but others were taken aback," the administrator admitted. The $400,000 project opened in September 2007. the columbarium features 200 niches. At its inauguration, twenty people had signed up for the marble-faced, $1,500 niches.
Hendrix, a Methodist-related institution, already features a freshman course on death and dying. The columbarium, said Cloyd, is be "a good reminder to students of the circle of life."
At The Citadel a columbarium is actually designed to raise money -- the famous military school in Charleston, S.C., wants to support the school's famed bell tower, which contains a carillon forged in The Netherlands. The wall was built in the lower part of the bell tower, said school spokesperson Jennifer Wallace, and contains 400 niches when it was dedicated in November of 2007 during homecoming. Wallace said the proceeds from the sale of niches to alumni will also be used to fund scholarships for students who play the carillon.
The columbarium at the University of Richmond is a serpentine wall that encloses a garden next to the university's chapel. Niches cost $3,000. Retired university chaplain Rev. David Burhans, who helped conceive the columbarium eight years ago, said that at chapel weddings the brides must walk along the wall to enter the church.
"Now all the brides want their pre-wedding pictures in front of the wall -- they just see it as a beautiful garden," said Burhans.
My alma mater, Cornell University, has a beautiful campus, so I rang up the school to inquire about any Big Red plans for eternity. A bemused secretary handed me off to the vice-president of alumni affairs and development, who said this was all news to him.
"This hasn't ever come up," admitted Charles Phlegar. "I don't think it's something we should consider, but who knows? It's a new day."
Steve Goldstein is senior editorial director at the environmental organization Conservation International.
Among colleges and universities there is a subtly growing trend of offering final campus resting places for faculty, alumni and their loved ones. As cremation becomes a more widely accepted alternative to below-ground burial, the necropolis of choice in higher education is something called a columbarium -- a memorial wall with niches for urns filled with ashes.
The word columbarium is derived from the Latin for a nesting box for pigeons. For a few thousand dollars, a dovecote for human remains can be purchased at some of the nation's leading universities, and some lesser-known institutions of higher learning.Who knows what effect this might have on the already intense pressure to get into college, now realizing that one might be there forever?
How did a four-year experience become something so much more permanent?
As more than one college administrator noted, our increasingly mobile and rootless society no longer lends itself to family burial plots or homely, tree-shaded churchyard cemeteries. Alums are often wont to reminisce that college was the best time of their lives.
"I think this satisfies a real emotional need," said Richard Hesel of the Baltimore-based Art and Science Group, which provides marketing consultation to institutions of higher education. "The experience in those four years is probably the closest thing they've had to real community in their lives."
The U.S. Naval Academy, which has probably the oldest college facility, created a columbarium of 2,448 niches 22 years ago. Other schools picked up the idea, including three institutions in Virginia: the University of Richmond, the University of Virginia, and Sweet Briar College; as well as Chapman University in Orange, Calif., and Centre College in Danville, Ky.
The Citadel, the University of Notre Dame and Hendrix College in Conway, Ark., all have such memorials under construction or in the planning stages.
Notre Dame calls its above-ground burial ground the "Coming Home" Initiative for Christian burial, no doubt a perfect complement to the famous Touchdown Jesus statue adorning its hallowed football stadium.
With rising college costs seemingly as inevitable as death and taxes, why not combine two of the three?
College columbaria may hold several hundred to several thousand niches, which sell for between $1,500 and $3,000 and hold two urns. A recent newspaper editorial somewhat cynically referred to the practice as a tasteless marketing venture."This is really not about fund-raising," said J. Timothy Cloyd, the president of Hendrix, a small liberal arts college. "There are a lot easier ways to raise money."
"I don't think anyone wanted to make a killing, so to speak," said Dr. Dearing W. Johns, a cardiologist and associate professor at Virginia's medical school who once chaired the cemetery committee.
"The thinking of some people was that it could serve a fund-raising purpose, but most of the money goes to construction and maintenance," she explained. "We haven't marketed it."
Virginia's columbarium is an outgrowth of the university's cemetery, founded in 1828. When the cemetery was full, Leigh B. Middleditch, an alumnus of both the undergraduate and law schools who wanted to be buried at the school, proposed that a columbarium be built, and raised the financing with help from friends.
A first phase, with 180 niches, was completed in 1991 and all but one has been sold for $1,800 each. The second phase of 180 niches is completed, and 45 have been spoken for at $2,500 each. A third phase is likely to be built, said Dr. Johns, who said that she herself has reserved a niche because "I feel a strong attachment to the school."
Virginia first thought to sell the niches to its faculty, but has since extended the offer to staff and alumni.
"For faculty, this is their career and their life," said Dr. Johns. "When you've devoted yourself to something, you may want to be part of it always. These bonds are forming around universities, the way they used to form around churches."
At Hendrix, chaplain Wayne Clark initially proposed that a labyrinth be built in the middle of campus near the burial ground of a former college president, to serve as a place of meditation. Clark then persuaded Cloyd that a columbarium would be a perfect complement "to meet a great need due to the mobility and fractured nature of our society."
Cloyd convinced his 40 member board of trustees. "Twelve of them are clergy, and they got it immediately, but others were taken aback," the administrator admitted. The $400,000 project opened in September 2007. the columbarium features 200 niches. At its inauguration, twenty people had signed up for the marble-faced, $1,500 niches.
Hendrix, a Methodist-related institution, already features a freshman course on death and dying. The columbarium, said Cloyd, is be "a good reminder to students of the circle of life."
At The Citadel a columbarium is actually designed to raise money -- the famous military school in Charleston, S.C., wants to support the school's famed bell tower, which contains a carillon forged in The Netherlands. The wall was built in the lower part of the bell tower, said school spokesperson Jennifer Wallace, and contains 400 niches when it was dedicated in November of 2007 during homecoming. Wallace said the proceeds from the sale of niches to alumni will also be used to fund scholarships for students who play the carillon.
The columbarium at the University of Richmond is a serpentine wall that encloses a garden next to the university's chapel. Niches cost $3,000. Retired university chaplain Rev. David Burhans, who helped conceive the columbarium eight years ago, said that at chapel weddings the brides must walk along the wall to enter the church.
"Now all the brides want their pre-wedding pictures in front of the wall -- they just see it as a beautiful garden," said Burhans.My alma mater, Cornell University, has a beautiful campus, so I rang up the school to inquire about any Big Red plans for eternity. A bemused secretary handed me off to the vice-president of alumni affairs and development, who said this was all news to him.
"This hasn't ever come up," admitted Charles Phlegar. "I don't think it's something we should consider, but who knows? It's a new day."
Steve Goldstein is senior editorial director at the environmental organization Conservation International.
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COMMENTS (1)
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Foss Brown wrote on June 18, 2007 1:44pm
'This is an amazing story. I know colleges are always trying to raise money, but now they're trying in effect to raise the dead to do so.' [Report Comment]
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