UCSB officials release Q&A addressing Munger Hall controversy

The swirling controversy over the University of California, Santa Barbara’s proposed plan to add billionaire real estate investor Charles Munger’s massive self-designed dormitory building to its exhausted stock of student housing has been addressed by the university in a campus-wide Q&A published yesterday in which it answered “misconceptions” about the project’s design features and doubled down on its reasoning and necessity overall.  Last week’s revelation that architect Dennis McFadden had resigned in early October after a university planning meeting resulted in a heated letter to the design review committee, making waves on our discussion board, and even landing UCSB in national news outlets in part over Munger’s deep connections with billionaire investor Warren Buffett.  University officials failed to address McFadden’s indignation over its questionable contingent approval process but were able to issue a defense of sorts in the form of a self-prompted answer sheet that claimed...