I pay $7,700 to live in my City Hall Room – nearly $1,000 more than other similarly sized rooms in different residence halls. I do not take this additional cost lightly, especially when the Community Living and Learning Center essentially made it the only housing option open to me.

For that extra $1,000, I have the luxury of living in a beautiful room, furnished with leftover hotel furniture that I do appreciate. However, I have to deal with things that residents in other halls do not, such as doing laundry at literally all hours because there are only four washers and four dryers for all 550 students living here. And yes, I have to pay that extra $500 technology fee, even though I just had ethernet access installed this Tuesday, and my cable television only gets half the channels other students’ systems in other residence halls.

When I moved in, I was told ethernet should arrive mid-September. Where else but GW would I have to pay for 18 weeks of service and receive just four?

It seems I am paying for next year’s students to have benefits I am not getting. This residence hall was not, and is still not, ready for students. We were promised a new laundry room by the middle of October. It is not here. We were promised ethernet by Nov. 1 at the latest; it finally arrived Nov. 13.

An apology from CLLC and a refund for City Hall residents is needed. We have certainly not received a semester’s worth of utilities, and therefore we should not have to pay for one.

-Rachel Miller
sophomore