by Kayla Rogers
As a residential college with almost everyone living on campus, along with the difficulties of obtaining off-campus housing/status, one would think that our dorms would be much better than what we have. Housing comprises a significant chunk of our tuition, tallying at $6,970 for the 2024-2025 school year. Centre’s policy of having each student pay the same amount regardless of which dorm or house they are living in is fairly distinctive. Though we are all grateful for Old Quad’s renovations, is it right that someone living in a non-renovated building must pay the same price? I hope it goes without saying that I absolutely do not condone making good housing a privilege that only people who pay more can access, but rather, that if we have to pay so much money, the housing better be good regardless of which dorm we end up living in.
Last year, I lived in 322 College Street, just adjacent to the football field and nestled next to the Boles Natatorium parking lot. I was the first to move in and astounded at the state of the dwelling I walked into. Sure, the carpet was nasty and the couch looked like it was as old as the school itself, but what astounded me was the ant infestation. They were everywhere. As I inspected the carpet, I realized that the black pattern was not a pattern; it was a tiny civilization in my temporary home. One day, I came back to a trail of ants coming out of the floorboard, trailing all the way up the garbage and covering every piece of trash inside. The most traumatic event was when I was eating a bag of white cheddar popcorn (which was sealed inside of a ziploc bag) and looked down at the piece in my hand to see three ants on it with more all on the inside of the bag – I had only been eating it for 10 minutes before I noticed. We called maintenance, told the RLO, and they set up ant traps – the ones you get at the store. We continued to be infested, and pressured them with a few more emails until the problem was actually solved. This was just one of the issues in the house. Our household cat would sit and stare at the vents as we heard rustling of critters beneath us; there was a spider colony on our porch; and a window was broken in one of the rooms and patched up with what looked like a 3rd grader’s paper mache.
Now, I live on Fifth Street, and the problem of safe and clean housing has continued. Though bugs are no longer a problem, the house was clearly never properly cleaned when we moved in. Pieces of the floor and counters simply fall off, and the floor directly outside of the shower is rotted out. I noticed it almost immediately – you step out of the shower and onto soft wood that feels uneven and rigid beneath the fake tile flooring. One day, a piece of the trim next to the shower fell off, revealing very damp, black wood. When maintenance came to replace the piece, we were told that the floor was rotted about two feet outside of the shower and cracked a joke that we probably wouldn’t fall through the floor this year. To add insult to injury, one of our roommates has medical issues that appear to have been exacerbated by these living conditions. With an allergy to a specific mold that grows in damp wood, they are no longer safe to shower in our bathroom and have to travel to another building just to feel comfortable.
I can only speak to the experiences I’ve had, but I know that I am not alone in receiving inadequate housing. Let me make this point extremely clear: this is absolutely not the fault of the workers. It is the fault of the institution so hesitant to spend money that it would allow its students to live in poor conditions. I highly doubt that no one noticed the ant infestation or rotted floor during summer checks, but it appears that Centre administration will simply ignore the problems in hopes of saving money until they have no other option but to do something about it. And if the housekeepers or maintenance persons did not notice these things, maybe Centre should consider hiring more, or paying them better wages for all the work they do.