DeKALB – The new residence hall at Northern Illinois University comes with a construction price tag of $80 million. And from the looks of Monday’s ribbon-cutting ceremony, it looks as if the school spent every penny of it.

Unlike most of the dorm rooms on campus, the new hall consists of all single bedrooms. Each student shares a bathroom suite with another, and 12 of these single bedrooms would share a common space – or a “cluster” as NIU’s housing officials call it – that contains a study area, a small kitchen, and a flat screen, 55-inch TV.

Complex coordinator Connie Storey said the decision to make all of the new hall’s 1,008 rooms single bedrooms was a deliberate one.