Residents of Bingham Hall in Newing College are settling into the new building, and while some are finding it to be full of perks, others are still waiting for a few kinks to be worked out.

Bingham is the first new building in the East Campus construction project and offers a variety of facilities that are not yet available to those living in older residence halls, including electronic card-readers for every dorm room and bathroom.

“I guess the biggest difference, outside of the physical size and space in the hall, is that while we retained the corridor-style housing that students and alumni from Newing and Dickinson [Community] wanted us to preserve, we also are providing today’s [Binghamton University] student with more privacy that students of today are asking for,” said Kristin S. Calegari, the assistant director of Residential Life for Newing College.

The privacy Calegari spoke of comes in the form of semi-private bathrooms. Each cluster of three rooms, which means six residents, share two half-baths: a sink and toilet on one side of the cluster and a shower room on the other side.

In addition to these semi-private bathrooms, the residential hall, which houses approximately 140 more residents than any the original Newing halls, has different furniture, moving away from the light wood to a modern cherry-looking finish, Calegari said.

The layout of the building itself has also been changed from that of the original buildings.

“There is a … main lounge, a nice-size kitchen, several other common-area spaces and multiple lounges for social programming and study space on each floor,” Calegari said.

Some freshmen students living in Bingham are impressed by the structure and facilities available in the newly developed building.

“It’s big, spacious and all of the facilities are brand new, which none of the other dorms can claim,” said Jonathan Jampel, a freshman psychology major and resident of Bingham.

Upperclassmen are also enjoying the benefits of the new building and noticing the improvements from the buildings they had previously lived in across campus.

“I lived in Dickinson last semester and it is such an upgrade,” Allison Krause, an undeclared sophomore resident of Bingham, said.

Still, freshmen, as well as upperclassmen who have lived in other places across campus, are noticing some disadvantages to living in Bingham.

According to Krause, the study halls are not complete, and there is no soap, paper towels or hand dryers in the bathrooms.

Jampel also added that there have been some technological problems within the building as well.

“One problem has been the card scanners that open the doors to the rooms, which have been temperamental across the whole building,” he said. “There is also no overhead lights installed in the rooms yet, which can make lighting the room at night a challenge.”

Residential Life, while finishing projects within the building, is working on keeping Newing College united as a whole during construction of other new buildings.

”Of course, the challenge for the Newing community over the next two years will be to maintain our strong community pride with an actual construction zone in the middle of our community and to put up with some of the inconveniences like not having our own dining hall or having student mailboxes located over by the Post Office,” Calegari said.

A number of departments, including Residential Life and the Dormitory Authority, are working closely with the contractors to ensure that the impact on student life is small and that the community’s construction will be complete by 2011, Calegari added.