The benefits of on-campus housing have been relentlessly shoved down every student’s throat by University Res Life, and I’ll admit that I fell for it too.
Campus apartments are advertised as convenient and practical for every college student’s needs. The prospect of being within walking distance from classes and other useful facilities was enough to draw me in as a soon-to-be sophomore, so I signed a lease with East Campus Apartments.
However, this was before last March, when the world was flipped completely upside down. With classes moving primarily online and group events rarely taking place due to public health concerns, I was disappointed at the time that I wouldn’t be reaping the full benefits of living on campus. Still, I figured I would at least have a makeshift learning space to share with like-minded students.
“Nothing could possibly go wrong!” I repeated to myself last August as I packed up my belongings and headed for new horizons. My dorm would be a place to call my own, at least temporarily.
I think we were all looking for an opportunity to be optimistic about something after such a weird and lonely summer.
My naïve outlook switched in an instant as my new roommates and I found a patch of black mold that had taken over one corner of our kitchen ceiling. We put in a work order immediately, but the mold was only taken care of with bleach and never looked into again.
Since moving in this past August, we’ve had to put in several work orders for various issues with the apartment, including multiple reports of roaches and chronically broken appliances.
By the end of last semester, I had lost faith in the apartments. Every day came with a slew of strange disruptions to daily life — but nothing that I hadn’t already (mostly) gotten used to.
My opinion of ECA reached an all-time low upon moving back for the spring semester, when everyone’s “fresh start” back at school was met with an extremely worrying amount of mysterious black sediment in the hot water supply. Every building in the complex ran grey-black water that night, and we were advised to flush out the lines until it ran clear. This took nearly two hours.
Since the black water fiasco, the first week and a half of school has been plagued with other plumbing-related issues, construction noises, cold showers and all. On top of every other problem we’ve run into since last fall, I’ve been seriously thinking lately: why are these apartments so expensive for what little they offer?
The typical four-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment in ECA runs residents about $3,980 a semester — or around $995 a month — to live on campus with inadequate parking, roach infestations, mold outbreaks, obnoxious construction noise and a questionable water supply.
It really doesn’t add up, considering that most nearby off-campus apartments are in better condition and don’t cost residents nearly $8,000 per academic year. The price of on-campus housing is far too steep for the quality of life offered, and I really think the University should be allocating the money it gets from rent payments to improving the buildings themselves.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for what we have now. But for the endless promises of a truly convenient, blissful college experience on campus, there’s a lot of room for improvement. I think I speak for a lot of residents when I say that the “convenience” of campus living is not all it’s cracked up to be, especially while we’re spending most of our time inside our apartments.
Emily Davison is a 19-year-old anthropology sophomore from Denham Springs.