LSU freshmen are weighing their options for off-campus living in Baton Rouge this spring, as their first-year housing contracts near expiration and many students sign leases for next semester.
Many students will try to balance cost and convenience, with apartments within biking or walking distance of campus costing more than apartments where students must commute. They’re also looking for a tolerable roommate, at minimum, for the duration of their first lease.
“There’s some pressure to get it done quickly,” history freshman Stephen Herin said. “I kind of just want to have it at ease.”
Herin and his current roommate, marketing freshman George Wilson, are apartment shopping together since they survived freshman year living together without any issues. Both are from Baton Rouge and were friends throughout high school.
Both students are excited to move out of their dorm in Laville Hall. Their only worry comes from the pressure of competing against nearly the entire freshman class currently living on campus for a space they’d be happy with in the years to come.
“I think living in a dorm is about as bad as it gets,” Wilson said. “You’re sharing a studio apartment with one other guy. There’s nowhere you can really go to get away. I feel like it can only get better when you have your own room.”
Because there are so many students in the market for an apartment, there’s lots of competition to find a satisfactory spot.
The average cost of living in a two-bedroom, air-conditioned dorm for fall and spring of this year was $8,720. Though apartments off campus range broadly in price, students will usually try and find a cost that is less than that of LSU.
For example, a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment at Ion, a complex just off LSU’s campus, is currently priced at $1,558 per month. Split between two roommates across 12 months, the cost of living would be $9,348 per person.
While the Ion apartment estimate doesn’t account for food expenditures, the minimum cost of an on-campus meal plan starts at $2,217 per semester, or $4,434 for both, accounting for the cheapest option: 12 meal swipes per week and $600 paw points. Meal plans are required for freshman students living on campus.
Required funds for living on LSU’s campus will start at around $13,000 compared to the Ion estimate of $9,300. This setup tries to relatively equally compare these two; if a student aims to move into a four-bedroom, four-bathroom apartment, they can expect a lower monthly rent.
Services like parking will probably be comparatively cheaper to on-campus options and some may come complementary, depending upon the complex. Ion features a plan where roommates have their own restrooms, a feature absent in dorms of LSU, although certain aspects of living, like groceries/food, would be left to the discretion of the students.
Mass communication freshman Maddox Dilts, and his future roommate, accounting freshman Gage Deshotel, didn’t know each other prior to starting at LSU. Dilts, who is originally from Dallas, says that he was the only member of his high school to even attend LSU.
“It wasn’t hard to find friends, it was definitely more difficult to find a roommate,” Dilts said. “I’m going to be honest: even some of my friends back home, I would not live with.”
Finding the right person to live with requires discretion and impersonal judgment. Deshotel, a Baton Rouge native, believes that just because someone has lots of options doesn’t mean those people would make for a good roommate.
Dilts and Deshotel approached the situation inquisitively, with both parties honestly measuring the merit of one another as a roommate. It wasn’t personal, they said. Both of them realized that this person had to be tolerable outside the constraints of a traditional friendship.
Dilts and Deshotel don’t plan on living with their current roommates in the years to come. Neither of them are upset with their roommates; rather, they’re appreciative of the lessons they’ve learned from their current roommates and the nature of sharing a tight space with another person for an extended period of time.
“I can definitely say that we coexist well,” Deshotel said. “We get together and have really great conversations, but there have been instances in which I can see that we live two completely separate lives. Sure, we coexist, but are we able to coexist in the same room for three, possibly four to six years?”
Balancing the priorities of each roommate can prove just as essential as the personal compatibility of them. Certain features may hold a value unmeasured monetarily.
Dilts, for example, would be willing to spend more on the apartment if it meant that he could walk to campus. Deshotel wants the apartment to be the best value for his money, even if he has to commute to campus, so balancing those priorities serves as another dimension of compromise outside of just getting along.
