Whitman College has been trying to close North Hall for seven years now, but now that effort has renewed vigor after the most recent announcement from Memorial Building: North Hall will be torn down to make room for the new Sarah Bolton Presidential Ballroom.

Anticipating criticism on the grounds of redundancy, one representative of the project said, “While we already have a ballroom on campus, I think we can all agree that Reid Ballroom is boring, it’s plain and most importantly it lacks panache. We hope Sarah Bolton Presidential Ballroom will fix that problem by adding some needed glitz and glamor to campus.”

At the press conference, a reporter raised another issue: Where is the money for this coming from, especially at a point where faculty members salaries are being reduced, and their benefits are being cut. The representative responded to this by sticking his fingers in his ears and saying, “Lah lah lah, I can’t hear you!”

“Honestly, the whole thing has been a lot easier than we expected it to be,” another project representative told The Wire in an exclusive interview. “The city gave us a permit as soon as we promised not to out-shine The Marcus Whitman. In fact, the only issue we’ve run into is that we were told we couldn’t name it the Sarah Bolton Memorial Ballroom since she isn’t dead yet.”

The project is set to begin in January, as long as no other unforeseen circumstances force the school to reopen North Hall, and the team that was in charge of the Junior-Senior village estimate that the project should be completed within a month.