Not long ago this year’s freshmen, myself included, participated in the sophomore housing selection. It was not a pleasant experience. First, I had to scout the different dorms. It was hard to imagine leaving the asbestos-free walls, glorious showers, even-tiled bathrooms, thermostats and spacious lounges of Longstreet-Means. It’s hard to move on after experiencing such luxury, especially to the stink and squalor of a dorm like Alabama.
Along with many of my fellow freshmen, I rushed an Sophomore Adviser (SA) application with Longstreet marked as my first choice. It was rejected. And so, faced with the dreary prospect of Complex or Woodruff, I began to bite my nails in fear and anticipation. I also began to plan for the worst – an assignment to Alabama. I drafted an email with an excuse for not being able to live on campus next semester and prepared to send it, weighing my options.
Essentially, the plan was to live for free on-campus. Between the libraries, the DUC, other dorms and various secret hiding places on campus, I figured I could survive on campus without actually paying the exorbitant rent Emory demands for those death-traps they insist on calling dorms.
I acquired a sleeping bag, drafted plans for a hammock, got some Goretex boots and began asking around. My question: do you leave your room unlocked on a regular basis?
My plan was to stash various supplies in my friends’ rooms around campus and retrieve them as needed. Laundry could stay in the Longstreet laundry room, where the honest inhabitants would never dream of stealing or otherwise discarding my scavenged collection of second-hand clothes. My books would be a trickier subject, although I’m sure I could set them carefully among the less-perused volumes in the stacks – perhaps the tomes on psychothermodynamics. The more important textbooks I would keep on me or stash in my secret lair.
Some of my more voluminous possessions would have to be liquidated, but my guitar would have to be put somewhere safe and readily accessible.
I had everything lined up and ready. When I received the news that on-campus housing was completely full, I sent the email I’d drafted excusing myself from on-campus housing and received a reply in the affirmative.
My plan was about to come to fruition when a good friend forbade me to carry out my plan, telling me it was my inevitable fate (doom, some would argue) to room with him. So, just like that, my plans were thrown out. Eventually, a space opened up for us in Complex.
Of course, my guitar was the real disqualifier for this plan: I could never bear to fall asleep without her tucked safely underneath my bed – that’s where she’ll be all of my sophomore year, on the second floor of Smith Hall.
Jonathan Warkentine is a College freshman from Almaty, Kazakhstan.
Cartoon by Katrina Worsham
The Emory Wheel was founded in 1919 and is currently the only independent, student-run newspaper of Emory University. The Wheel publishes weekly on Wednesdays during the academic year, except during University holidays and scheduled publication intermissions.
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This same bullshit with housing happens every single year. People keep complaining that Emory is run like too much like a corporation, but any landlord who ran their business like Emory would soon find their building half vacant. Students need to start boycotting Emory’s dorms. Between the the asbestos, the mold, and the Res-life faggots driving everyone crazy, you couldn’t pay me to live on Emory’s campus. Here is what you have to do: Starting freshman year, rent a townhouse off-campus and tell the administration that you’re living with your parents and commuting. If they object, have your parents speak to them, back up your lie and threaten to sue the school. There is always a way to game the system at Emory.
Is it really that bad? I mean honestly? Have you been to some of the hostels in Europe? Your assessment of the res-life department is rather discriminatory also, probably not the best way to get heard about your grievances.
People complain about the asbestos-contaminated buildings, but they really don’t understand how asbestos works, and how you would have to inhale it (Hint: you would have to go scratching and disturbing it).
I lived in Dobbs and then Alabama. The living conditions aren’t bad. Your room is a place to lay your head down at night, not as a permanent home.
The new amenities and dorms is why college tuition is sky-rocketing. You have kids who will *never* live in a building that was built in the 1910s, so colleges have to compete to build bigger and better housing. The stuff you get through res-life and housing is 10x more support, psychological and physical, than you would get off-campus.
(I’ve lived on a college campus for 3 years. Lived off it for this last year. I know what I’m talking about).
First of all, dorms are covered by room and board fees, not tuition. And if that was the case about new dorms being the reason why tuition is sky-rocketing, explain why rent rates in general aren’t sky-rocketing. And if asbestos was perfectly safe unless “disturbed”, why is there a lucrative asbestos removal industry in the US. I wonder if the president’s house has asbestos. Also, crappy hostels in Europe are cheap.
WARKENTINE!!! This is the worst editorial that I have EVER read! It would have been more interesting if you wrote about the last time you took a shit. With all of the controversies going on around campus and in the rest of the world, you chose to write about trivial non-sense. And that is an insult to your friend that it is doom to live with him.
This kid reminds me of Max Fischer from the movie “Rushmore”. Anyone else agree?
The vast majority of dorms at Emory are fantastic. The only, and I mean only exceptions are the handful of Sophomore options, namely Alabama, Clifton Tower, and Woodruff. I agree that there probably need to be more options for 2nd year students, but in general I’d take Emory’s dorms versus any college around.
Clairmont is great, the LEED dorms are great, Harris and Dobbs have both been redone, etc,