W HEN Elmer J. Peterson became Business Manager of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles in Jan uary of this present year, he was given a free hand by President Rood and the Trustees to make changes that might effect definite economies. Approaching the problem from the standpoint of a person previously un familiar with the traditions and customs of the school, Mr. Peterson was enabled to see several opportunities for saving. One of the changes has been so worth while that the school’s friends should know of it and of the providential way in which the problem was solved through the aid of some Institute friends. Stopping a $1,909.00 Monthly Loss to the Institute At the time of the business manager’s coming (January, 1937), the men stu dents of the Bible Institute, approxi mately 146 in number, were occupying rooms outside the Institute dormitory. The reason was simple. The two great thirteen-story hotels built in 1914 as Institute dormitories had been reserved separately, one build ing for women and one for men. As a result of the depression which began in 1929, the men’s dormitory, the north wing of the Bible Institute building, had been leased to the Willard Hotel Com pany on March 1, 1933, and was under management independent of the Institute. But at the beginning of the second semester of 1937, the number of women students in the women’s dormitory was, as usual in the spring term, insufficient to fill the huge thirteen-story'building. In the meantime, the faculty and admin istration offices had been moved to the sixth and seventh floors of the women’s building, thus dividing the building into two parts—the second to the fifth floor, and the eighth to the thirteenth floor. The lower and upper groups of floors
Mr. Peterson Buys Some Beds — Proving Thereby The Practical
water, and located in almost the geo graphical center of a great metropolis, the charge made was far below the gen erally accepted rate for such accommo dations. A rapid survey showed that even in second-rate hotels near by, the price was nearly double this figure, and' that no other school contacted by Insti tute officials offered single rooms at such low rates as were in force at Biola. But to discover such a situation is not to remedy it. The awkward fact still remained that about 146 young men were paying a total of $1,909.00 monthly for no better accom modations than the Institute provided, and were having to group together by twos and threes in rooms of hotels en tirely outside of Institute control. The Crux of the Problem A little quiet study soon disclosed that the key to the problem lay in the plan | followed in furnishing the Institute bed- f rooms. Each room contained a single iron bed. The rooms were not large yk enough for two single beds, but Mr. f Peterson found the way to work the prob lem out by studying the methods em ployed in practically every other school | in the country. The solution was found in the use of “double-decker” beds, oc cupying the same floor space as a single bed, as shown in the photographs below. Next, the room rent was changed to $4.00 weekly per student for a single room, or $2.50 weekly, provided that two President Paul W . Rood (left) and Elmer J. Peterson, Business Man ager of the Bible Institute of Los An geles, inspect the new type beds pur chased to make possible the housing of all dormitory students within the south wing of the Bible Institute build- . ing. Had these additional beds not Jj been bought, the use of two beds in ^ one room as shown in the other pic ture would have left the school short of beds for the remaining rooms. THE BIBLE INSTITUT Incorpi 558 SOUTH LOS ANGELES i l H ow O u r N ew D ou b le - D e c k e r B e d s L o o k
were thus available as .separate and dis tinct sections for dormitory housing of men and women students. Yet due to its established rule of using entirely sep arate buildings for men and women, the Institute found itself in the position of maintaining vacant rooms in one build ing, while at the same time it was rent ing rooms for some 146 men students in outside hotels. The situation was really more serious than this simple statement makes it ap pear, for the reason that the student payments for room rent approximating $40,000.00 a year are, or should be, an important part of Institute income, par ticularly since our buildings were espe cially designed and built to accommodate our students. Studying the problem of housing the students economically, Mr. Peterson learned that it had been the invariable policy of the Bible Institute to assign to each student a separate room, at a rent of not more than $3.50 per week. The courses offered up to the present time have required the students’ use of the building for only nine months of the year. Thus, based on a year of fifty-two weeks (on which all overhead charges are calculated), the ^school’s low rates for single rooms meant that a room in come of something less than $2.32 a week or a rental of less than 36 cents a day was being received for each room. For an electric-lighted, steam-heated sleeping room equipped with hot and cold running
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