Spring Break
Housing answers questions
Kevin Rand
Issue date: 2/28/07 Section: News
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About 20 students gathered in the Campus Village resident activity center to meet with five members of the student housing administration on Monday night to engage in a town hall-style meeting that covered issues ranging from on-campus housing fees, maintenance and elevator issues to fire alarm problems and cable television services.
The five-person panel, within the scheduled one-hour, tackled a list of 15 issues, or questions that housing residents suggested to them through e-mail before the meeting, as well as answered live questions from some students in the room.
Anthony Grant, a freshman who is an active resident at Hoover Hall on campus, sympathized with those that felt housing might not be worth the prices students pay because "you have some defects which are like leaks in the buildings, the fire alarms will go off sometimes … the heater not working or something …"
"It depends on the students and what are their expectations," he said. "A lot of people are paying out their own pockets and it's like, 'I'm paying my out of my pocket - it's not worth it.'"
The panel tried to address the notion that off-campus living might be more affordable than on-campus living.
Martin Castillo, the associate director of administrative service said, "… the 'mom and pop' operations, the apartment complexes that have four or five apartments, or a house or something along those lines - we'll never be able to compete with some of those operations that can keep there prices so low because it is more of a 'mom and pop' type thing.
"But I think if you compare us to the bigger operations, the bigger complexes," Castillo said, "I think we still take a lot of pride in the fact that we stay either right at the market or right below the market."
He also said that students should consider some of the intangible benefits of living on campus such as "proximity to campus, no commute, saving on gas and that sort of thing."
For someone like Brian Tam, a junior majoring in civil engineering who lives in Campus Village, a more annoying problem has been the recent, recurring false fire alarms.
The five-person panel, within the scheduled one-hour, tackled a list of 15 issues, or questions that housing residents suggested to them through e-mail before the meeting, as well as answered live questions from some students in the room.
Anthony Grant, a freshman who is an active resident at Hoover Hall on campus, sympathized with those that felt housing might not be worth the prices students pay because "you have some defects which are like leaks in the buildings, the fire alarms will go off sometimes … the heater not working or something …"
"It depends on the students and what are their expectations," he said. "A lot of people are paying out their own pockets and it's like, 'I'm paying my out of my pocket - it's not worth it.'"
The panel tried to address the notion that off-campus living might be more affordable than on-campus living.
Martin Castillo, the associate director of administrative service said, "… the 'mom and pop' operations, the apartment complexes that have four or five apartments, or a house or something along those lines - we'll never be able to compete with some of those operations that can keep there prices so low because it is more of a 'mom and pop' type thing.
"But I think if you compare us to the bigger operations, the bigger complexes," Castillo said, "I think we still take a lot of pride in the fact that we stay either right at the market or right below the market."
He also said that students should consider some of the intangible benefits of living on campus such as "proximity to campus, no commute, saving on gas and that sort of thing."
For someone like Brian Tam, a junior majoring in civil engineering who lives in Campus Village, a more annoying problem has been the recent, recurring false fire alarms.
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