Furniture already in Pemberton Hall will be installed in other residence halls starting this summer.

The furnishings will be built by inmates as part of a program through the Illinois Department of Corrections.

The beds, desks, dressers and bookcases will be flexible, instead of the built-in furniture in the rooms now, said Mark Hudson, director of housing and dining.

Sophomore sociology major Brittany Leslie has some of the furniture in her room at Pemberton Hall.

The room isn’t furnished with the whole set, but she has a desk not coated with chipping contact paper.

“The old desks, they had contact paper – this stuff is actually wood,” Leslie said.

The desks show wear over the course of the semester, but she said the newer desks hold up.

She said she’s been able to have a loft with the extra space.

“They kind of look like furniture you’d put in your house,” Leslie said.

The proposed $6 million furniture purchase was approved by the Board of Trustees Monday. Carman Hall South and Thomas North halls receive furniture first.

“Students bring more stuff than they used to,” Hudson said. “You can’t do anything to make the room bigger.”

So the new furniture could be stacked and moved.

“It’s like building blocks – everything is the same width and height,” Hudson said.

Student housing fees finance the project.

The fees will probably not increase more than 5 percent next year, and a recent survey indicated 65 percent of students would be willing to fund the extra cost, Hudson said.

“They’re boosting tuition all over the place and might as well get something to show for it,” said Matt O’Malley, Residence Hall Association student vice president.

With his desk beat up, O’Malley said he wished the furniture would come to McKinney Hall sooner.

Eastern’s furniture will be made by the inmates at Graham Correctional Center in Hillsboro through a program called Illinois Correction Industries.

The program expands to other state minimum and maximum facilities that make products ranging from eyeglasses to baked goods, said Brian Fairchild, spokesman for the Department of Corrections.

Not just anyone will build the furniture.

The inmates are screened, trained and often have an educational background, he said.

In making eyeglasses for other prisons, inmates are given the opportunity to earn a high school equivalent degree, work with a local community college and have a job interview.

“You have to qualify for the job,” Fairchild said. “You would have to get certain vocational certification in order to be hired. It would be much like the competition in the real world.”

With Eastern contracting the furniture though the IDOC, the benefit is that the money stays within the state, Fairchild said.

“It’s a win-win situation for us.”

Illinois Correction Industries is a $50 million a year industry.

Since the program can only sell non-profit or to other governmental agencies, it is supported by a revolving fund which takes all gross revenues and puts it back into a central fund, Fairchild said.

The industry started in 1950.

Inmates will be paid to make Eastern’s furniture at $200 a month.

“Individuals are paid on what is called a peace work basis,” he said. “It’s not the type of wage anybody on the outside could survive on.”

The program is there to provide work and teach a skill before inmates leave prison.

“It keeps inmates busy doing meaningful work – providing them with the first month’s rent and down payment on a car when they get out.”

Less than 10 percent of those in the program are put back behind bars, he said.

The end result is that students will be able to stretch out.

There is about 5 feet of space not accessible with the current furniture, said freshman special education major Nancy Zegler. She is the the housing chair for the Student Government and has seen models of the furniture.

“With this it will clear up all this space,” she said. “You could probably put a couch in there now.”