Colleges offer on-campus resting places

ORANGE, Calif., May 14 (UPI) -- College campuses, including Notre Dame and Chapman University in Orange, Calif., are offering burial plots for alumni and faculty.

Chapman opened a honeycomb structure designed to hold the cremated remains of alumni and faculty and Notre Dame announced plans to unveil a pair of limestone and brick mausoleums designed to hold full-body crypts, The Los Angeles Times reported Monday.

The Notre Dame crypts are expected to sell for as much as $11,000 apiece.

"People look back on their college years and say, 'Those were the best days of my life,'" cemetery consultant Mel Malkoff, who oversees Chapman's columbarium, told the Times. "Why not spend eternity there?"

The idea of on-campus burial is not a new one. Notre Dame operates a sprawling burial ground and mortuary that opened in 1843 and Iowa State University houses a 131-year-old burial ground that holds the bodies of two students, a former night watchman, his dog and about 800 other corpses, the newspaper report said.