On Uninvited Guests
By Calais Watkins, Dining Editor
I only lived in NYU Housing for one brief, inglorious year — in Weinstein Residence Hall, to be specific. I expected the cinderblock walls and lack of bathtubs. For those things, I had time to mentally prepare. I did not, however, expect the critters, nor could I have ever been ready. After winter break of that year, my roommate and I returned to Weinstein to find not one, but TWO dead mice in our shower. (Shower sex gone wrong? I mean, probably.) That same night, I fell asleep to the sound of their family members scampering across the floor. The following months of glue traps from maintenance did nothing to solve the problem and, after a while, I accepted the fact that my new roommates were there to stay. And we never even signed a living agreement! Dare I bring up the cockroaches in the basement?
On Access to On-Campus Spaces
By Sam Klein, Managing Editor
When I was a first-year, my sophomore teammates lived at the Green House at Seventh Street, the most neglected — but arguably best — dorm on campus. At least three nights a week, I would do homework in the basement study lounge at Seventh Street with teammates, including upperclassmen living off-campus who would get tapped in by the sophomores. The study lounge, replete with its beautifully unpleasant pale green walls, five tables, chairs, whiteboard and single tiny window, brings back some of my favorite memories of that year. But now, my teammates are all first-years or live off-campus (as do I). I don’t know anybody who can tap me into Seventh Street, and because it only has 90 residents, chances are, I won’t next year either. At this point, the odds are heavily stacked in favor of me never setting foot in that study lounge again — all because NYU prohibits people who live off-campus from accessing on-campus spaces. Why? They already arrange housing priorities to push upperclassmen off-campus, which is fine because I like my apartment more anyway. But why can’t I go into residence halls? I want my beloved study lounge back. I miss it.
On Temporary Solutions
By Anna-Dmitry Muratova, Senior Reporter
Last semester I lived with three lovely people, with whom I kept the apartment clean, neat and most definitely mold-free — until black mold started growing on the ceiling of our bathroom. It grew in a shape that weirdly resembled footsteps (it’s spooky season). We filed a work request. Someone came and … painted over it. Which, if you’ve never encountered black mold, is not the way to get rid of it. Surprise, surprise, it grew back. Naturally, we filed another work request. What did they do this time? You’ll be correct in assuming … they painted over it once again. And … it grew back. For the third time. Thank goodness, there was only a week until move out at that point.
On the Many, Many Problems With Rubin Residence Hall
By Ronni Husmann and Ishaan Parmar, Deputy News Editors
Rubin is straight a–. We’re in mountains of f-ckin’ debt just to go to this goddamn f-ckin’ school and we live in a hellhole with no f-ckin’ air conditioning. The toilets are deada– public bathroom toilets, and the tiles are f-ckin’ cracked. We’ve been to Lipton. We’ve been to Brittany. We’ve been to Third North. The f-ck are they doing with Rubin? Honestly, what the f-ck? The one good f-cking thing we had was that laundry was free for two f-cking weeks because the machines broke. It was the only f-cking thing we had. And then those f-cking greedy-a– motherf-cking Brittany Hall kids came to our goddamn laundry room to do their f-cking laundry, and because of this intrusion, the Rubin staff made it a f-cking priority to get it fixed. Now we pay for our laundry and it f-cking sucks. And there’s no f-cking dining hall. And the f-cking cockroaches. And the smell. The f-cking smell! It’s the goddamn pipes or some sh-t that stinks up the whole f-cking building. The printer is always f-cking broken. Always. We’ve never once printed something in our own goddamn residence hall. And then the motherf-ckin’ outlets. We have outlets right behind our beds that we can’t use because the holes in the outlet are deada– too f-ckin’ big. And the best f-cking part is that we didn’t even put Rubin on our goddamn housing lists.
On Those Tiny Mailboxes
By Melanie Pineda, Editor-at-Large
There are a number of reasons why choosing to live on campus is easier than having to battle through the hellish maze that is New York City apartment hunting. But one thing I’ll always give NYU sh-t for is their mailboxes; they are especially undesirable. The entirety of my sophomore and junior years, I was unable to open those cursed boxes — even though I lived in a different dorm each year. No matter how many times the Resource Center explained to me how to open the tiny thing, they both simply wouldn’t budge. Who knows whether or not my local government actually sent my absentee ballot to the right address that year? Who knows whether or not my angry emails to some poor voting booth volunteer were warranted? I sure don’t. Or maybe all mailboxes are simply out to get me and no one else. One thing I do know for sure is that if the United States postal system were still alive and well, I would be dead.
On a Series Unfortunate of Events
By Alexandria Johnson, Deputy News Editor
I had a wild ride with NYU Housing during my first year. It started when I dormed during Opportunity Programs summer. I was told that I would stay in the same room at Goddard Residence Hall, which was great because I didn’t have to transition to another dorm. Knowing that, I asked if I could keep my belongings at the dorm while I visited my family. They said yes — as long as I kept my things on the desk and not in the bathroom. Long story short: when I returned on Move-In Day, my room was cleaned and all of my stuff was gone. Not only did I have to adjust to a new roommate, but to the loss of clothes, important papers and my supply of paper towels. This doesn’t even take into account the fact that midway through the semester, my roommate waited three days to tell me that she had a bite on her arm — a bedbug bite. I had to talk to my RA, make a report and email Goddard’s Residence Hall Assistant Director for a bite that wasn’t even mine. Then, when the exterminator arrived, I had to wash all of my clothes and leave my own dorm for four hours, hoping my friends were available. Living in Goddard may have prepared me to have a community of friends with different interests, but nothing could ever prepare me for bedbugs and stolen stuff.
On Being Squished
By Bela Kirpalani, Sports Editor
Why, oh why, are we subjected to sleeping on those skinny twin XL mattresses? Imagine actually being as tall as your Tinder bio says you are. You simply would not fit! Now, I’m not very tall, but sometimes, after a long day of doing absolutely no work, I just want to jump into my bed head-first and sprawl out. Unfortunately, I cannot do this because there is simply not enough bed for me to live out my dreams.
Opinions expressed on the editorial pages are not necessarily those of WSN, and our publication of opinions is not an endorsement of them.
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