Notre Dame provides its students with a variety of perks, from Flex Points for all those Starbucks runs, to extremely discounted football tickets. It’s actually difficult to complain about anything on campus except that sometimes the dining hall doesn’t have Mediterranean food for a few weeks at a time. However, while such perks are relatively equal for all students across the board, with the exception of athletes and their delicious training tables, there is one aspect of student life that does not remain equal for all: dorm life. For about $54,000 a year education, one would expect that all dorms would be created equal. Unfortunately that is not the case. Dorms like Ryan make dinky little Lewis Hall seem despondent in comparison, while dorms like Walsh with its sketchy elevator make me appreciate my “Home Behind the Dome” all the much more.
Additionally, there’s a significance difference between living in a men’s dorm versus living in a women’s dorm, as Zahm with its blaring music all day long can clearly attest to. I seriously could not imagine being the poor boys neighboring the room with the huge speaker system blaring Disney classics all day long. But greater than that are the standards that come along with living in single-sex dorms. In a particular men’s dorm I can watch a boy walk through the halls with a beer in his hands while in a women’s dorm, if even a whiff of alcohol is detected, Res Life’s for all (oops, sorry *Comm Stands)!
But with that, things become iffy, because I love being able to walk into my dorm room at 1:00am on a weekend an not have to worry about drunken weirdos knocking on my door looking for a party. The worst thing I have to worry about is freshmen burning their popcorn in the microwave for the first time (or me burning my own popcorn after a long delirious night of studying). At this moment in time however, we are faced with the possibility of women dorm hosted parties becoming a legitimate thing. Like, can Lewis be the female Zahm of North Quad? Is that weird to want? But the real question is, how do other girls feel about this change in environment? Personally, I’m all for it. Who really needs to be in bed before 2:00AM on a weekend? Live a little girls, it’s college. With that being said, if you hear music blaring down the hall at 10:00pm on a Friday, don’t be a Debbie Downer, just deal with it.
But, back to the main point; the obvious dorm inequality roots in the fact that hundreds of North Quad and South Quad students are forced to suffer through sticky summers and early springs while West and Mod Quad students bask in their seasonal air-conditionings, yet have the nerve to complain that maintenance has yet to activate the A/C when it’s 80 degrees for two days in the spring. How does the university expect students to receive a restful night’s sleep when slumber is interrupted with night sweats twice a night, even with one to four fans in a single room? What’s an even greater disappointment is the number of times I have had to take a cold shower in the morning because North Quad is plagued with ancient pipes. And I am sure this isn’t just an issue Lewis faces.
Wow, not even jealous of those high ceilings, Duncan…
But possibly, what bothers me the most is the fact that while Lewis Hall boasted an inhabitance of 300 girls last semester, the Office of Housing somehow found a way to convert all of our quads into six-chicks and our study rooms into singles. It makes no sense to me that while dorms on other quads have doubles the size of our triples that we are being forced into even smaller spaces than already so. It is impossible to build a community with anybody in my dorm considering our sheer size. And to top that off, our study rooms were completely converted to the new Office of Housing, leaving us with three significantly smaller study areas.
While it may seem petty to complain about such things, these are real concerns many students are having with our current housing situations. A constant promise of hot water in the mornings should be a given, not hit or miss. I shouldn’t have to take a shower before I go to bed and when I wake up in the morning because the summer heat converted my room into a sauna overnight. But, for $54,000 a year, such complaints shouldn’t exist in the first place.
What would you like to see changed about dorm life?