It’s that time of year again when friends and current roommates fess up to the fact that each can’t stand the other’s music, one is too messy, one too loud and those treacherous words must be uttered: I can’t live with you. Well thanks to GW, now you can avoid all the discomfort of figuring out roommates, since apparently there are isn’t anywhere to live. Like the old woman who had to live in a shoe, many students this past week were literally facing the thought of having no where to move into next fall.
The lack of appropriate student housing is due to several different factors, the most prevalent I can think of being the size of the past two freshman classes. Just by accepting a surplus of 200 students for the class of 2008, GW has once again let its greed for profit run over the comfort of students. With such a large group of freshmen, many of whom now have upperclassman standing due to their AP credits, the class of 2008 has by proxy shut out many rising juniors from being able to live where they want. It was deceitful of the University to accept such a large freshman class when it can’t accommodate the current students it has. Perhaps the University was going to rely on UPD making enough drug busts in Thurston to dissolve the problem, but apparently that didn’t work and there was no plan B.
When the headline on www.gwhatchet.com Monday read, “Juniors shut out of New Hall and Ivory Tower,” it didn’t come as a surprise. I noticed the desperate situation after receiving frightened calls from friends asking for my housing number and if I had a good one, just so they could hold a space in a dorm that wasn’t on Mount Vernon. While GW graciously offered returning seniors and current Mount Vernon residents ‘Squatter’s Rights,’ a majority of students were not able to hold onto a desk, an armoire or even those gross City Hall hotel curtains.
In my twisted view of life here, I see that shutting the juniors out of housing options is the University’s sneaky way of saying, “Hey, we don’t have enough rooms for everyone, so we are just going to give you the most inconvenient place to live so you are forced to move out.” Misanthropic or not, the fact that most upperclassmen have to find an off-campus apartment or otherwise face isolation on the Vern or in Strong Hall is nowhere near doing anybody a favor. Not every student has the resources to invest in furnishing an apartment or ability to sign a 12-month lease if they can’t stay here year round. While most seniors choose to live off campus in their final year at GW, with Ivory Tower many are choosing to stay on campus – making an even smaller pool of rooms for juniors to get into. Rising juniors are in a very sensitive place as far as housing due to the fact that many of them want to go abroad at some point the following year and the idea of getting an apartment lease is not an option. The beauty of living in GW housing is that when you leave to go study abroad, the University takes care of who will live in the room after you. For many, junior year will be the last year they have in GW housing and they have earned their right to live in a mature, adult housing environment such as New Hall and Ivory Tower with students their own age, with kitchens and central proximity to campus.
With Student Association elections being held again today, I encourage everyone who has been affected by this situation to go and vote. When it comes to issues like housing, it is the SA officials who get the privilege to speak to the administration, to the Board of Trustees and to CLLC for the students and fight for our rights to fair housing options. That is the point of student government; to elect a representative that knows the issues, knows how to navigate the red tape and talk to the administration about the issue. Who better to know what it feels like to be displaced by a bad housing number than a fellow student? Don’t expect Trachtenberg in his million-dollar home to care; it’s up to us. So get out there and put on your best right clicking skills at one of the computer labs on campus; otherwise, start packing.
-The writer, a sophomore majoring in journalism, is a Hatchet columnist.
