Housing at MSU seriously sucks

Every year thousands of college students come to campus with cars filled to the brim with every thing they will need for their new home. Some students call home an apartment or a house, but for others it is the dorms. At first glance, the dorms provide a convenient place for many to stay; students do not have to worry about rent, most of the everyday household items are provided, there are other floors filled with people so you will never have a shortage of friends and since they have to have a meal plan while living in the dorms, their meals are taken care of too. However, other students know the truth: MSU housing is not as great as they would like you to think, especially when your roommate leaves.

Yes, the dorms are a necessary rite of passage for all college students, but that does not mean they are the best of times; this is most apparent when things with your roommate do not work out. If for whatever reason your roommate does not make it through the whole school year of your life in the dorms, get ready for a lot of headaches and frustrations. Granted, MSU’s housing department has a lot to deal with considering the number of students they need to take care of, but it is still a very unorganized department; when you call to get answers, you are likely to get a half answer or no answer at all. After some time alone, you get the dreaded option letter.

This letter features 3 options that you pick if your roommate is nonexistent: Find a new roommate yourself, have the school choose a new roommate for you or pay $1,336.00 for a single dorm. The first two options sound reasonable enough, but they aren’t.

Finding a roommate in the middle of a semester is a hassle no student needs to have while takin care of school and the school puts a 3 day deadline to find someone and another week to move with no help from the school; finding another person to live with in the span of a week is hard work.

Having the school pick for you seems better: there is no deadline and the school is responsible for the problem, but once you tell the school you want them to find you someone, they give you a couple people to talk to. Again, this seems nice, but you didn’t pick option 2 to do housing’s job.

The final option is the most absurd thing and is not reasonable in the slightest. Why should students be responsible to pay over a grand for to make up for the fact that either their roommate left or you and your roommate didn’t get along? It isn’t your fault either in either scenario and it is ridiculous to throw charges on students. Also, does the school really need to squeeze another $1,000 out of students? Does that extra $1,000 really make a difference?

Bottom line, when a roommate leaves, MSU makes their students jump through hoops and live through weeks of unnecessary stress when it is not anyone’s fault that a roommate situation fell through. The first two options aren’t too bad, but the fact that students have to pay $1,336.00 to keep a room they already paid for at the beginning of the year is a cheap shot thrown by MSU.