The college will raze the on-campus house Donnybrook in the next few years with plans to use the property for administrative purposes, according to Dean of Men Aaron Petersen. 

“There’s going to be an administrative building with a multi-use facility, offices, and storage,” Petersen said. 

According to Petersen, Hillsdale College purchased the house at 62 Park Street in June 2016, allowing sophomores and juniors from the dorms to live there while still being in a designated on-campus house.

Jonathan Brewer ’10 lived in Donnybrook during his junior and senior years and gave it the name Donnybrook when he lived there his junior year. 

“The summer beforehand, I was getting the word of the day in my email, and I got ‘Donnybrook.’ It’s a name for a brawl, or a group of guys fighting in the street, in Ireland,” Brewer said. “I was like ‘oh, man, we are 10 guys living in a house.’ And that’s a pretty good name and we went for it.”

Brewer said Donnybrook holds fond memories for him and the group that lived there, but it was probably time for the house to stop housing students. 

“We played a lot of music there, and had jams, which was fun,” Brewer said. “And we had a lot of visiting writers come by, and after they would do their writing workshop, we would often take them over to the Donnybrook and drink and talk with them.” 

Donnybrook, which houses 10 students, has spacious common areas, a basement, and a large backyard and porch, junior Daniel Doyle said. 

Doyle, a current resident of Donnybrook, said the house has a way of cultivating tight-knit groups of men that has been good for all those living there.

“You get to learn how to function with other people in the house without an RA,” Doyle said. “It was a great learning experience for everybody, and it was good for young men.” 

Doyle said he had heard rumors that Donnybrook was no longer an on-campus option for students looking to move out of the dorms, which was later confirmed by the deans. 

“We got an email from the dean’s office as a house informing us that we wouldn’t be able to live there for the next semester, which was sad,” Doyle said. 

According to Doyle, Donnybrook was a place for sophomore and junior men in the Simpson Residence where a few could move to if they did not receive off-campus permission.

“It was a good option for people who wanted to live not in the dorms, but didn’t yet have off campus permission, or didn’t want to go off campus and they still wanted to be on campus.” Doyle said. “We all came from Simpson, and some people don’t want to stay in the dorms all year, but that also doesn’t mean they necessarily want to join Greek life.” 

According to Petersen, with the acquisition of the on-campus houses such as Hill House, Chase and Kempton residences, and the College Park Townhomes, students have a lot of options before going off campus. 

“It was an unintended consequence to lose off-campus permissions for juniors and to have so many juniors denied off campus, but we must be good stewards and fill our beds,” Petersen said.

As many sophomores and juniors live in on-campus housing, it creates a great environment for juniors to become strong student leaders, Petersen said. 

“Juniors are really dynamic leaders, sophomores are high energy, but not as much experience,” Petersen said. “Junior leadership is really a sweet spot, and so an unintended consequence is that I actually have more of our really powerful leaders on campus now, but it wasn’t by design.” 

Sophomore Trevor Hall, who had hoped to live in Donnybrook next school year, said the house has a long legacy of great culture and will be sad to see it go. 

“It was definitely a net positive to the campus,” Hall said. “I also think for the younger Simpson guys, it gives them an opportunity to look over at Donnybrook and see a lot of independent upperclassmen as his role models.”