So, this year is my third year as an RA at Mercyhurst and although I live in an area where not too much ever happens, I have been to some student apartments that really are going downhill. And I don't mean the mess that some students have in their apartments (my room is a complete mess every day) but the living conditions in those apartments. Built in the 1950s, the Briggs and Lewis apartments really need some work in order to make them worth the money we pay for them here at Mercyhurst.
Before I came to Mercyhurst I looked at the webpage to find out everything possible about the campus. I found some pictures that showed what the apartments look like. Well, typically every website wants to advertise with only the best things, so I found out pretty soon that the apartments did not look the same IN REALITY! So, I moved into an apartment my Freshman year (because I am an adult student) and well, I thought that as a Freshman you pretty much don't have any rights to a nicer looking apartment. OMG, I was so wrong. Well, of course you can try for the townhouses when you're an upperclassman, but only if you also pay even more than we already pay.
I am a Senior now and I have been to quite a number of apartments on campus. The list of all the things that make these apartments not worth what we pay for them goes from windows that don't shut properly (which is nice during the Erie winter) all the way up to leaking gas stoves (!!!). Not to mention the big problems with mold in the Wayne street apartments, which gets overpainted every year.
And here comes the big hit: The school is announcing on their webpage that they are spending $32 million to construct two new buildings (http://www.mercyhurst.edu/construction/). I'm just wondering why!
Of course Mercyhurst wants to attract new students with a nice look, but how about KEEPING current students who just had to suffer through the shock of learning that tuition was bumped up to 31K!!! I just wonder what we pay this money for if noone seems to care about the living conditions in current student housing. It seems like the school only cares about the West side of campus; not the East side. PLUS, word is out that they are planning to build a better, larger Ice Rink for a couple million dollars as well. Sure, we have a Division 1 Ice Hockey team, but what about the rest of the students? Just like every parent should care about ALL his or her children the same way, I think that every school should care about EVERY student as if they were all Division 1!
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3 comments:
I am now a senior and for my first two years of college, I lived on campus at Mercyhurst. Freshmen year was a blast. I had so much fun living in the dorms. It was nice to walk down the hall to see your friends. Sure, I lived in a cubicle but I don't think you can experience college unless you live in a dorm at least once. The next year I lived in the apartments on Lewis. That is when I got sick of living on campus. They were doing construction on the building and the multipurpose court for half the year. We had to listen to construction at 7am and during Finals Week, construction went on even though they write people up for shouting down the hall. On top of that, there was clearly mold on the wall which was covered with ugly wallpaper. We could never control the temperature of our heater and the water temperature of our shower changed constantly. After all that is said and done, I was still paying a lot of money to live in a smaller room than freshmen year. I like my roommate, but not where I'm hovering over him just relaxing in my room. So, I moved off campus and we all got our own rooms. Our living room and kitchen are twice the size of the ones on campus. We have a huge basement and our own washers and dryers so we don't have to worry about people stealing clothes and we don't have to deal with annoying RAs. (No offense to anyone who is an RA but some of them make me feel like I am at 5th grade camp.) We got all that and paid about the same for living in a tiny little apartment with four people. It may cost us a little more this year with the price of natural gas going up but it is really worth it. I had fun on campus for the 2 years that I was there, but i don't regret moving off campus and I don't think I could ever go back to living on campus.
I totally agree with both of you. I am a sophomore right now, so I'm new to the whole apartment situation but from what I've experienced (in only three weeks) is that the conditions of the apartments are horrible! I live in Briggs, right in front of the shuttle stop, and people tell me that these are the "newest" on Briggs. I couldn't belive it...THIS is "newest"?? Flooding kitchen floor is "newest"?? Broken shower is "newest"?? Crack and mold on the ceiling is "newest"?!?
And the worst part is, that calling maintenance won't do a bit of difference. My roomates and I have them on speed-dial already, but nothing seems to get done.
As an international student it is harder for me to move off-campus, but ohh how I wish I could! Hopefully I'll be able to get a townhouse next year..but I heard they were demolishing those to build new offices or something. Where's the sense in bringing down the only good (recently re-newed)on-campus housing available...beats me.
ABSOLUTELY. My friends and I knew we would never have the housing points to even think about living anywhere but the standard Lewis and Briggs apartments. Even if we could I'd be hard pressed to hand over another cent to Mercyhurst. The majority of upperclassmen are definitely not getting what they pay for. I'd have to say the low point for most apartments has to be the bathrooms. Now if you don't clean occasionally and pick up after yourself, any apartment can look like a terror. But I've seen first hand a tub, that even after being SCRUBBED daily, mysteriously grows a thick lining of green film every night. When the owners finally got maintenance to come and take a look at it, they had to call out a contractor who told the residents that the previous, god knows how many, fix jobs that had been done on the caulking around the tub were atrocious. And the whole tub was removed and replaced. But how often does that happen. The sinks either produce freezing or scalding water, never both. The carpets are coming up an are filled with more beer and stains. It's no wonder students are unhappy with their living situations. And I was downright outraged to hear that new residence halls were being constructed rather than fixing up the current situation. I'm glad I won't be here when the pampered freshman who live in the new dorms next year move into their 1950's Briggs apartment the following year. I don't know when the townhouses were built but I imagine a similar response followed thereafter. There's a hand-full of really nice, two-story places with all the amenities, but that's a fraction of the student population. I've visited a lot of other schools and even seen the apartments that students pay for off campus in NYC and elsewhere, they pay A LOT less and their landlords are responsible for the up keep and providing a worthwhile apartment for the money they spend. Is anyone making sure we get what were paying for??
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