W&L decides to build Hillel House for Jewish students
By Kate Shellnutt
Washington & Lee University has decided to build a Jewish Life Center on campus, creating what would become the only Jewish building in Rockbridge County.
The university’s Board of Trustees, at its fall meeting last weekend, approved a committee recommendation to build such as center, but no site plans have been made public.
Joan Robins, a W&L administrator who is full-time director of the campus Hillel chapter, presented to the Board plans for a three-story building with offices, meeting rooms, a lounge and possibly a Kosher cafe. She described the building as more of a Jewish Community Center than a synagogue.
Specifics involving the building’s design
and location will be determined before the Board’s next meeting in
February, said Jim Farrar, secretary of the university and assistant to
the president.
He said the Jewish alumni have told the board they are interested in supporting and paying for the project.
The Hillel Foundation is an international Jewish organization that sponsors academic programming, social activities, religious services and community service projects on college campuses.
Since she became Hillel director in 2001, Robins has worked to boost the Jewish population on campus, which was then just over 1 percent. Her work recruiting Jewish students and making Hillel a larger, more active organization has helped raise the Jewish population to 3 percent.
She thinks a Jewish Life Center is a step the university can take to further raise Jewish enrollment. Robins researched Hillel chapters and “Hillel Houses” at other campuses, such as Vanderbilt, where the Jewish population rose from 3 percent to 15 percent in just four years.
“And everyone attributed that growth to their new Hillel building,” said Robins, who visited Vanderbilt last year with Bill Hartog, the dean of admissions, and three Jewish students.
Her ad-hoc committee that addressed the Board included Hartog, Howard Dobin, dean of the college; Dawn Watkins, dean of students; Joe Grasso, the university’s vice president of administration; Mark Grunewald, a law school professor; and Dmitry Slavin, Class of 2009.
The university once boasted a more sizeable Jewish population, especially between the 1940s and ‘80s, when it had two Jewish fraternities, Zeta Beta Tau and Phi Epsilon Pi.
The Center is a “way to give alienated alumni a great source of pride, to bring them back into the fold” after the end of these two fraternities and decades of declining Jewish enrollment, said Robins.
It would also serve a secondary purpose of serving the Jewish population in the county, who attend monthly Hillel Shabbat, or Sabbath, services, which are now held in the Alumni House. The “First Fridays at Five” services draw as many as 75 people for worship and dinner.
“The facility can be used by many different groups,” said Farrar. “We wanted to give the Jewish population the support that others already have.”
Reporter Kate Shellnutt interviews Joan Robins, campus director of
Hillel chapter 
Produced by Washington and Lee journalism students.
Lead supervisor: Prof. Claudette Artwick
Reporting supervisor: Prof. Doug Cumming
Technical supervisor: Michael Todd