KOLI: Rutgers residence halls need some serious work
Column: Talk More
Living in a campus residence hall should be a positive experience for students, but it is difficult to enjoy living in a decades-old building that resembles a prison.
The renowned residence halls on the College Avenue campus, often called the "River Dorms," were built in 1956, making them 67 years old. Approximately 15 years ago, they were renovated to promote student interaction.
From the looks of it, they need to be renovated once again.
It is understandable that residence halls are not supposed to be built like luxury apartments, but they should be spaces that students feel comfortable staying in for the entirety of their academic school year.
Students around campus frequently describe the residence halls referred to as "The Quads" on Livingston campus as prison-like due to their small windows, floors separated by gender and quiet surroundings. Additionally, the walk to the bus stops for any bus other than the B or the LX is not the shortest.
Many residence halls on campus have bad water pressure and quality, broken windows, stained carpets and paint chipping off the walls and ceilings, but the main problems students have with these residence halls are not all about aesthetics.
"Last year, I remember people had the bugs … inside of their windows in their dorm," said Sophia Desire, a School of Arts and Sciences sophomore and former resident of Frelinghuysen Hall on the College Avenue campus.
Frelinghuysen Hall and the residence halls that surround it on George Street cannot be changed, so the bugs are going to be swarming around regardless. But if the window screens did not have so many holes and the windows themselves were not cracked, then the bugs would not have been able to get inside the room in the first place.
The University should check rooms for damage and repairs before students move in for the fall to ensure the rooms are ready to be inhabited. Having to file multiple maintenance requests can be exhausting for students, especially when they do not know if they will even come to resolve the issues.
"A kid on our floor last year, his window fell in," Desire said. "I remember they left glass all over his room and never cleaned it up."
With the generally cramped size of the rooms, having glass shards strewn across the floor is very unsafe. Rutgers should at least provide the means to clean things like this and fix the window before it can be replaced.
"The elevators are always breaking down," Desire said. "Our doors, where the chain and bolts are, are starting to come off the hinges."
This raises additional safety concerns with the locks not being secure enough. In a location such as the College Avenue campus, nonresidents can frequently enter the buildings despite not having swipe access. If the locks are not working properly, anyone can break into the rooms, even if building access is supposed to be restricted to residents of that specific residence hall.
It can become an even bigger issue if a person is inside the elevator when it breaks down. No student should have the fear of being stuck in an elevator due to what has happened in the past.
At a school as large as Rutgers, the maintenance department is likely to be bombarded with concerns. Getting back to people who fill out requests may take time, but it is something that has to be done. Students should not have to wait till their peers start experiencing the same issues before filing requests.
"If one person complains, I feel like they should take that into consideration, especially since we are paying for these dorms, and they are not in good shape at all," Desire said.
The pricing for a traditional room in a residence hall at Rutgers, including a double and communal bathroom, ranges from approximately $8,000 to $9,000. Most of these residence halls do not come with decent water quality or air conditioning.
Students should ask themselves and the institution if they are getting the value for their money.
Rutgers has residence halls on all campuses with potentially hundreds of students who face these kinds of issues every semester. Changes that have to be made to improve the quality of on-campus housing obviously cannot be done overnight.
It would take time for the University to renovate its residence halls, but it should start by drafting up plans. A student survey can help bring other problems that students may be facing to light. After all, students are going to be living in these residence halls for nine months out of the year. It is important to get their feedback and address their concerns.
The residence halls on campus claim to promote interaction between students, but that cannot be done until their quality improves.
Rutgers must make these living spaces more appealing for students so they can feel comfortable socializing with other people instead of jumping at the first opportunity to leave their residence hall.
Vidhi Koli is a sophomore in the School of Arts and Sciences, where she is undecided. Her column, 'Talk More,' runs on alternate Tuesdays.
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