I’m sure you have heard all the rumors about “suicide Sylvan.” There is no doubt about it, Sylvan does not have a good reputation, but get rid of all of your assumptions, start with a clean slate, and redevelop your opinion.

Have you got rid of them yet?

Good. Despite what you are told, Sylvan has its advantages. Sylvan is the only residential area on campus that offers suite style living, and this is actually better than a dorm room. Suite style living closely resembles that of an apartment such as the North Apartments, or even off-campus housing like Puffton or the Townhouses.

Sylvan’s suites are possibly the best place to live as an undergraduate, especially if you are not prepared yet to move off-campus. You are able to arrange the suite full of your friends, and some are even available for co-ed living. There are a mix of single rooms and doubles allowing for a total of eight people to live together. Instead of having your best friends downstairs or on the opposite side of the hall, you are in the same area and can leave the door to your personal room open to allow the flow of conversation.

But the great thing about Sylvan is you have a common room, and this is basically a furnished living room to do what you want with. You do not have to sit in your room with the door open to talk to your friends, and there is no need to make your bed in the morning because no one will ever need to use it as a seat. The common room is there to bring everyone together. There are internet connections and cable jacks, and if you and your roommates put in the time and decorated a bit, this space becomes a great area to watch movies, play games and drink hot chocolate in the midst of the winter.

Even more importantly, on weekends when friends come up and visit, the common room is a great place to let them crash too. They are out of your way, in their own part of the suite, and you don’t have to listen to them snore. And if you don’t have friends or use the common room as an area to hang out in, it is a great place for storage. Throw your bikes and rain boots in there.

Suites also give you the advantage of sharing a bathroom with the people you are living with rather than an entire floor of strangers like in Central or Southwest. Students just have to wander down their private hallway to the showers, not down the very public hallways of other dorms where there could be visitors. Another bonus is there are little cubbies in the bathroom for all of your stuff.

Unlike having an apartment, all the public areas in the suite are cleaned by the maintainers, meaning less work for you. The hallway and common room is vacuumed every week. Bathrooms are cleaned multiple times, the floor, the mirrors and sinks, are all scrubbed. The showers are sprayed down. One less thing you have to worry about as a busy college student.

Besides the living advantages, there are academic benefits. Sylvan has the ability to be quiet, but it is not necessarily a bad thing. Sylvan allows the opportunity to hideout when there are major midterms coming up all in the same week or seven-page term papers.

There is also a great courtyard covered by the trees out in the center of the three Sylvan buildings. It is a great place to get work done in the fall and spring. It is also a great place to play. There are always people outside whether it is to smoke or to play football. Sylvan is not much different than the atmosphere in Southwest. People are actually more friendly and more of a close-knit community in Sylvan because there is a smaller amount of students that live in the area.

From that close-knit community students can make friends that last forever. I know I have. I lived in Sylvan my freshman year. I have had the same friends since. We have the same memories of crazy weekend shenanigans that I got from living in Southwest a year later.

Oh did I forget to mention, instead of silly dorm parties, students in Sylvan can easily make their way to Puffton or the Townhouses for they are only about a mile down the road. Sure that seems like a lot, but Southwest and Orchard Hill are twice as far.

Have I changed your mind yet?

Sylvan doesn’t deserve the reputation it has. It isn’t bad, and in fact, it’s quite good. It may be up a hill, but not as big as Central’s, and once you get past the small things, you’ll realize it’s a really nice place to live.

Amanda Joinson is a Collegian columnist. She can be reached at [email protected].