As Branner re-opens today after a 9-month, $20.2 million renovation, freshmen will be greeted with refurbished rooms - complete with new furniture, paint, lighting and carpeting, new bathrooms with the latest plumbing, fixtures, and showers, and a redone lounge with new TV cabinets, lighting, paints, and carpeting.

“It’s nicer in every conceivable fashion,” said RAs Sagar Chandaria, a senior.

RA J.P. Schnapper-Casteras, a junior, who like Chandaria lived in Branner his freshman year, added that “It’s well-lit and the water isn’t brown. Before, it just wasn’t up to today’s standards.”

Other changes to Branner include several new study rooms, new kitchenettes, a stronger foundation and structure, a new laundry room, an enlarged computer cluster, screens on windows, and a new courtyard.

There are also new outdoor social areas with barbecue pits, a new, larger 2-story RF cottage, along with new fire alarms and sprinklers. Some doubles were converted to singles as the Residential Housing and Dining Enterprises felt that the original rooms were too small.

“I think that this has been an exciting and rewarding project,” said Executive Director of Student Housing Rodger Whitney. “We have brought an 80-year-old, tired, run-down and beat-up dorm back to life so that it can start its next 80 years. It’s truly a transformation.”

Although the new elevator and the new well-lit basement with study rooms, storage space and laundry room were top contenders, the RAs’ favorite feature of the renovation was the courtyard.

“It’s useful and beautiful,” Schnapper-Casteras said. “It went from being a marsh to being a high-class, swanky cafe; it went from being California to being France.”

The residential renovation cost about $15 million while the dining renovation cost $5.2 million. The new kitchen area and seven-station servery, described by Whitney as “state-of-the-art and contemporary,” was undeniably necessary as Branner meals had been prepared in the Manzanita kitchen for the past few years.

“I think it [Branner] is really, really nice,” said incoming freshman Lisa Falzone, who moved in early for athletic commitments. “There is much more space than I thought there would be. Somebody who graduated eighteen years ago recommended it to me. I’ve heard that everyone outside of Branner hates it, but that the people living there love it.”

Branner houses 174 freshmen this year - more than 10 percent of the freshman class. It is the largest all-frosh dorm and has earned the slogan, “Branner sucks,” which the other dorms chant during large freshman gatherings.

“I never thought Branner sucked, but I do now,” said senior Nic Kanaan, who lived in Rinconada his freshman year. “I think it sucks that one freshman dorm is really nice when the rest are not-so-nice.”

RAs Chandaria and Schnapper-Casteras think that the dorm rivalry is good because it promotes interaction between dorms. But it can also go way too far and be “slandering, biting and dangerous,” says Chandaria.

“I don’t know why Branner sucks,” said senior Mike Etchepare, an RA in Otero. “It just does.”

“Come see it before you say it sucks,” warned Chandaria.

Branner’s renovations came as part of the Capital Improvement Program, a 19-year renovation program that upgrades older housing facilities at Stanford. Housing and Dining Enterprises gets input from RFs, dorm staff, and students at house meetings as it plans for renovation. There is usually one year of planning with one year of construction. Next on the CIP agenda are Roble, which is set for renovation in ‘05-’06 and Crothers, which is scheduled for ‘06-’07.