Money can buy a lot of things. Oceanfront homes. Private jets. A $200 million dorm project with thousands of beds and almost no windows. What it apparently cannot buy is universal applause, and Charlie Munger seemed perfectly fine with that trade.
When backlash erupted over the longtime Berkshire Hathaway vice chair’s controversial student housing design for the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2021, Munger did not launch a polished apology tour or suddenly pivot into people-pleasing mode. Instead, he delivered the kind of quote that sounded perfectly on-brand for a billionaire famous for blunt opinions and zero interest in sugarcoating them.
“You’ve got to get used to the fact that billionaires aren’t the most popular people in our society,” Munger told MarketWatch in 2021. “I’d rather be a billionaire and not be loved by everybody than not have any money.”
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The comment quickly became tied to one of the strangest campus controversies — a proposed mega dorm critics compared to everything from a cruise ship to a futuristic prison block.
Dormzilla Turned Into A Billionaire PR Nightmare
The uproar centered on Munger Hall, an enormous 11-story dormitory designed to house more than 4,500 UCSB students. The problem was not the size alone. Roughly 94% of the single-occupancy bedrooms were designed without windows, relying instead on artificial lighting and ventilation systems.
To Munger, the project was a practical solution to California’s brutal student housing shortage. The billionaire investor believed dense housing with large communal spaces could maximize efficiency and lower costs. Critics saw something far darker.
Dennis McFadden, a consulting architect who had served on UCSB’s Design Review Committee for 15 years, resigned in protest over the project. In his resignation letter, published by The New York Times, he described the dorm concept as “a social and psychological experiment” and called it “unsupportable” from his perspective “as an architect, a parent, and a human being.”
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The criticism only intensified from there.
Architecture critic Paul Goldberger amplified the backlash writing, “This design is a grotesque, sick joke — a jail masquerading as a dormitory,” in a post on X in 2021. The line spread rapidly across coverage of the project and helped turn the proposed building into a national debate over billionaire influence on college campuses.
Despite the outrage, Munger never appeared especially rattled by the criticism.
Munger dismissed the criticism in comments to Architectural Record, saying McFadden “reacted with his gut like an idiot” and failed to study the building intelligently. Munger argued the architect never properly reviewed the project’s models, which he believed demonstrated the dorm’s strengths. “Everybody who sees the models goes ape-sh*t for them,” Munger said.
Munger Never Wanted A Popularity Contest
Long before the dorm controversy, Munger had built a reputation as one of Wall Street’s sharpest and most unapologetic thinkers. Born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1924, he started as a real estate lawyer before partnering …
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