When I came back to Brown for the start of the new semester, I saw many faces I hadn’t seen in almost a year. Junior fall is a time for many students to travel abroad, and my friends were newly returning to life at Brown. At the start of the semester, I also found that I no longer had a kitchen in Vartan Gregorian Quad B. As it turns out, the kitchen was turned into housing for returning study abroad students as a result of housing shortages on campus. During the first week, I ventured up to the third floor to see if any friends were cooking upstairs. However, the third floor, like the second, also didn’t have a kitchen.
Unfortunately for the 148 students who live in New Dorm B, there is only one functional kitchen, located on the fourth floor of the building. I don’t usually cook, but I know that the people living down the hall from me are off meal plan, as are several other residents on my floor. No longer having a kitchen makes things difficult for them. This is not only inconvenient, but it points out two serious problems with housing at Brown.
First, and somewhat less important, is the simple fact that many students go off meal plan but remain in dorms, expecting to have a kitchen available each day. New Dorm, in which all students are either juniors or seniors, offers an example of this popular lifestyle. By using the kitchens as rooms for overflow housing, Brown restricts the ability of students who make the choice to go off meal plan to make their own meals. This is simply unacceptable.
Unacceptable too is the lack of common space available for students to work and study as a result of the housing dilemma. Many students use common rooms to work, get together and escape from their rooms for a bit. Regardless of whether students frequently use a kitchen, a common space or a study room, it should be understood that spaces like these must be available for student use. Converting these areas is detrimental not only to the students forced to live there, but also to those normally accustomed to having them available.
Second and more important is the fact that this situation points out a blatant shortage of housing for students. This results in massive inconveniences for students and a clear reduction in the quality of living for many. This has been a problem in the past — a problem that many have tried to bring to the attention of the administration — but nothing has changed.
Many students are put in overflow housing after studying abroad because the University has not worked out the numbers in terms of available rooms and the quantity of students it needs to accommodate. Sadly, it has become commonplace to visit dorms that no longer have kitchens or common spaces available and meet people that live with unknown roommates.
It is not only returning students that find themselves in this situation. Summer assignment is all too common for rising sophomores and often results in the same scenario. Friends of mine were put into summer assignment after their first year, split up individually, put back together, split into two doubles and finally reunited in a makeshift common room for the duration of their sophomore year.
It is not fair for Brown students to find themselves in these types of situations, especially considering the number of students who are unable to live off campus each year. It does not make sense that so many students are denied off-campus permission when, year after year, Brown is forced to convert community living spaces — mostly kitchens and common rooms — into makeshift dormitories to accommodate an excess.
As I wrote in a column last semester, students’ quality of living is important, and the choice of where they will live for the year is an important part of their college experience. As such, the University should make more of an effort to accommodate all students in a comfortable manner, as well as in a manner that does not inconvenience the remainder of the undergraduate population. One simple way to resolve this problem would be to increase off-campus permission for juniors. Or better yet, to eliminate the three-year on-campus housing requirement altogether.
Housing is too critical a part of college life to be run by a system that is disorganized and detrimental. There are simple solutions that could be put into effect immediately and would greatly improve students’ living experiences. So please, Office of Residential Life, help my friends get their kitchen back, and let my friends living in the kitchen find the adequate living space they deserve for the $11,994 in room and board fees they paid this year.
Daniel Delaney ’15 can be reached for comment at daniel_delaney@brown.edu.
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