http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/18/education/18campus.html?_r=1&oref=sloginColleges Offering Campuses as Final Resting Places
RICHMOND, Va. — Want to recapture those undergraduate years? Colleges and universities are offering the chance — for eternity.
Jay Paul for The New York Times
Richmond’s columbarium has 3,000 niches, of which 100 have been sold since its completion in 2001.
For a few thousand dollars, the University of Richmond and a half-dozen other universities are giving alumni and faculty the opportunity to have their ashes maintained on campus in perpetuity.
Three more universities — Notre Dame, the Citadel and Hendrix College — are building similar memorials, known as columbaria.
“It seems really off the wall on first blush to most people,” said Richard W. Trollinger, who was involved in the creation of one at Centre College, a liberal arts college in Danville, Ky. “Why on earth would a university create a columbarium?”
The answer is simple, Mr. Trollinger and other college officials say. In an era when many people are highly mobile and do not settle in one place for long, a college can have a strong allure as a final resting place, they say. And officials point out that colleges have a special resonance for many people, who have forged life-long relationships as undergraduates...
For the universities, memorial walls can serve other purposes, although officials are often reluctant to talk about them. A columbarium, by building stronger bonds with alumni and their families, might lead eventually to substantial donations.