As New York City has its boroughs, UMass has its residential areas. Before a student even steps on campus, housing has already subliminally influenced the way we perceive where we want to live with their information packets advertising Southwest as “urban” and Northeast as “quintessential New England.” Each area then seems to have its own personality. Though in all fairness, not all the students who live in a specific area share its personality. If they do, I’d like to know what personality test is being used. Let’s face it: Not everyone ends up where they want. Just ask the students who have done time in the Campus Center Hotel.
Orchard Hill is one of the highest points on campus. It’s coincidental, then, that students in the Commonwealth College should live there. The honors program has an elevated status on campus, so why not make it obvious? It is only fitting to note that Southwest is on the lower end, and has an ever-sinking reputation. Urban in structure, a party by nature, Southwest often finds itself a scapegoat for the University’s undesired image of violence. The discrimination that Southwest faces as the party center is easily seen through the backpack ban at Berkshire late-night. Just like everything else in the world, it would seem that the negative actions of a few equal a loss for others.
Since scapegoating seems to be one way of going about this, Southwest was created with the intention of expanding on-campus housing. It only takes a bit of simple math to come to the conclusion that in order to expand the undergraduate population, you need more rooms. But what has been the thorn in the University’s side is the size of Southwest. To house 5,500 students in a relatively small area isn’t a really bright idea. The fact that the infamous high rises had to be built, that the University had to defy gravity, is alone testament enough.
To digress to Northeast, it is akin to the quiet suburbs. It’s a melting pot for UMass with its legacy housing targeted at international students and the promotion of diversity. The similarly constructed Central is unassuming, and many students express an interest in wanting to live there. It’s the safe side of town.
For some, Sylvan is a mini-Southwest and a rebel twin to O-Hill, and for others it’s one of the quieter parts of campus. I guess all that multiple living gives way for a multiple personality syndrome. North is the designated living space for upperclassmen, and hopefully its residents will forgive me for relating their space to a retirement home. After all, the upperclassmen are more and more frequently being displaced from the traditional halls to make room for frosh community living.
The opinion on freshman halls is generally a mixed one. As a freshman, I now regret not having taken advantage of the opportunity as I listen to others rave about them. The praise is from present and past participants, and the dissent is from the upperclassmen (and some of the participants themselves who would rather stay put in their halls.) It’s like one giant, campus-wide game of opinion tug-of-war. Worst-case scenario is the looming sword over our heads that many see as inevitable: mandatory freshman housing.
What does that mean for the different housing areas? If you listen to skeptics, then it means more drunk freshmen in Southwest, and more destruction of the rich histories some buildings have carried in Northeast and Central. The upside? Let me get back to you on that one. I live in a mixed-year hall and I honestly don’t think that a junior can really have a worse effect on a freshman than another freshman could. It’s widely known that all-freshmen housing hasn’t put the cork in freshman drinking, and as long as that isn’t the real reason for the freshman communities, OK. My advice to the powers that be is to not make the students angry with more regulations than are necessary. For example, mandatory freshman housing.
The harshest comparison to be made would indeed be the Campus Center Hotel. I haven’t forgotten about the students who are often dropped off there for lack of space. A bit ironic that this lot should be left without a proper home on campus and should be put in the Campus Center, a place where on any given day you can find the truly homeless. That’s the sad part of it all. We, UMass students, can gripe and moan all we want about midterms (and housing for that matter), but sometimes we need to be reminded that there are worse fates than a warm dorm room and the promise of spring break.
Hannah Nelson is a Collegian columnist. She can be reached at [email protected].
