"Ghetto" Dorms

[apl68]

Since this seems like the day for linking to IHE articles, here's another one.  It seems that at some colleges the older, less fancy dorms are coming to contain disproportionate numbers of black students--to the point of being known informally on campus by such charged terms as "the ghetto" or "the 'hood."  Black students are complaining that in some cases they don't feel welcome in the more tony dorms:


https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/04/07/study-finds-campus-residence-halls-have-racialized-labels


The article focuses entirely on the obvious racial issues, but there's a class issue here worth noting as well.  It's well known that many colleges have built fancier dorms and charged fancy money for them from those who can afford it as a way of raising revenue.  A presumably unintended, but utterly predictable, result of such policies is that less well-heeled students have come to be concentrated in the older dorms with fewer amenities. 

Sad to see, when I consider how back in the day all the dorms at Alma Mater were pretty much alike.  You could tell that some students came from more affluent families than others, but we weren't always being reminded of it by the very addresses that students lived in right there on campus.

[Aster]

Maybe we shouldn't have built such high-quality buildings on our college campuses that they last for decades...

Particleboard dormitories for the win. They're always new!

[Caracal]

Maybe we shouldn't have built such high-quality buildings on our college campuses that they last for decades...

Particleboard dormitories for the win. They're always new!

At my alma mater they build fancy new dorms but within months of move in, students started reporting mold forests growing in closets. Turned out that the contractor had installed the insulation backwards...

[clean]

While at school for my PhD, I first lived in the 'graduate dorms' that were meant to exclude undergraduates. However, they allowed the foreign undergraduates because the graduate dorm didnt close for holidays, so they had a place to stay.

The big 'bonus' for some was that the rules had changed so that the Athletes! Dorm!  could no longer be exclusively for athletes! 

After one term, I moved to Married Student Housing (though I was single, but got an 'efficiency'.  Those were built in the 1950s to house the Korean War Veterans returning on the GI bill.  My unit had the original equipment!  Other units would go vacant as they were unable to repair the equipment after all those years. 


So, if there were Ghetto Dorms when I was in grad school, I lived in them!!

[apl68]

Maybe we shouldn't have built such high-quality buildings on our college campuses that they last for decades...

Particleboard dormitories for the win. They're always new!

At my alma mater they build fancy new dorms but within months of move in, students started reporting mold forests growing in closets. Turned out that the contractor had installed the insulation backwards...

About par for the course with today's slop-artist builders.

[ciao_yall]

Where I went to college we did not have enough dorms for freshpeeps - the housing shortage was legendary. Students would have a hard time finding housing, or even something close to campus. For a lot of freshpeeps they lost out on an important part of going to college and, IMHO, were being ripped off.

So it created a lot of resentment when the university created a new dorm with large suites and living areas, and of course, extra fees. They could have made the rooms the same size as the other dorms and held at least 30% more students.

[Anselm]

I have been shocked at how tiny some rooms can be.  I remember mine being 16 x 13' and that was sufficient for small gatherings.  My sisters attended state schools where the rooms seemed to be about 12 x 12' and it looked like a prison cell.

[apl68]

I have been shocked at how tiny some rooms can be.  I remember mine being 16 x 13' and that was sufficient for small gatherings.  My sisters attended state schools where the rooms seemed to be about 12 x 12' and it looked like a prison cell.

Seems like my room was between those two in size.  Having windows helped, and we had an en-suite bathroom with shower shared with another room.  Otherwise it was a very no-frills dorm.  There was a TV set in the lobby, and pay phones on each floor.  And that was about as far as the amenities went.

Twelve-by-twelve is not a bad size for a bedroom.  How it's laid out, and whether it has good lighting, could make a lot of difference in how cramped it feels.

[fishbrains]

I have been shocked at how tiny some rooms can be.  I remember mine being 16 x 13' and that was sufficient for small gatherings.  My sisters attended state schools where the rooms seemed to be about 12 x 12' and it looked like a prison cell.

. . . and pay phones on each floor.  And that was about as far as the amenities went.

Wow . . . how much did it cost to call President Lincoln back in the day?




[Okay, my dorms had pay phones too. I am so old . . .]

[dismalist]

And of course the monasteries didn't even have pay phones:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monastic_cell#/media/File:Avila_-_Convento_de_San_Jose_o_de_las_Madres_23_(reproduccion_de_la_celda_de_la_Santa).jpg

Sacrifice for learning ...  or not.