Sophomore Gabi Dolan sighs as she sits in her double room across the quad from the triple and personal bathroom she so craved.
Five brown bricked buildings outline Hood College’s quad. Each building houses students in either doubles, triples, or quads. Some buildings are considered worse than others by students and every spring semester students battle it out to receive the dorm they want.
But many students like Dolan don’t get the living situation they hoped for.
With just over 1,100 undergraduate students, Hood is a quaint college. But only those who live within 30 miles of the school or students with senior status can live off-campus, so there are a lot of people to squeeze into the 840 rooms available. Because of this, some students aren’t as lucky as others and come spring semester, everyone is on edge for room selection.
“My roommate and I knew we wanted to live in Blazer Hall, but you have to apply in groups, and we had a rough time figuring out who we were going to live with and what room we wanted to live in,” senior Colby Painter said. “We applied for four different rooms before we were able to get the one we actually wanted, and it only worked out for us because we were juniors at the time. The younger students don’t get as lucky.”
Meyran, Coblentz, Memorial, Shriner and Smith are the older residence halls on campus while Blazer Hall was built just last year. The older buildings only have double rooms, and all bathrooms are communal.
Hood is currently going through a remodeling period where each of the older residence halls will be upgraded within the next few years to mirror Blazer Hall. Memorial Hall is the first building getting remodeled and will be closed for the upcoming 2022-23 school year.
In Blazer Hall, there are doubles, triples, semi-suites and full suites, each with its own bathroom. Because of the vast difference between these buildings, the housing selection process for Blazer Hall is different than that of the others.
Everyone wants to live in Blazer Hall because of the newer rooms and personal bathrooms, plus in the triple, everyone gets his or her own room. The application process opens in late April and each type of room requires its own application that is due on a certain day.
“The selection for each group application process first entails staff reviews, the qualified groups are then ranked by their total combined earned credits and groups with the highest combined earned credits will be approved first,” Assistant Director of Residence Life LaShawn Taylor said about the Blazer Hall living applications.
Because of this ranking system, it’s much easier for upperclassmen to be approved for rooms in Blazer Hall.
“I had my friend apply for us to get the suite in Blazer Hall because she had a higher standing than me, so it was easier to get in,” senior Shea Jakubowski said. “We are also all four seniors so it was very unlikely that we wouldn’t get the room we wanted above the underclassmen.”
While many people are thriving in their current living situations, some are annoyed with how the process works each year. It really is all dependent on academic standings and year in school which students either agree or disagree with.
“As a senior, I fully think we should get first pick of rooms because there are some residence halls that are clearly better than others,” Jakubowski said. “Freshman and sophomores should live in those ones while the upperclassman enjoy the new building.”
While the housing process for Blazer Hall is all done in the form of applications, the other buildings are different.
Sophomore Caity Cordery and her roommate sat in line at Whitaker Campus center with their lottery number 96, hoping to get a room in either Meyran or Shriner. After selecting these two rooms as their top choices, weeks later the women were placed in Memorial Hall, which was their last resort.
“When I got the email saying I was placed in Memorial I was very bummed out,” Cordery said. “I thought we had a decent lottery number, but I guess since we are only sophomores there were just more people who wanted the better buildings.”
Dolan faced a similar disappointment.
“I applied for a triple in the new building, but we heard pretty soon after that we didn’t make it, so I got placed in Meyran which I was pretty upset about,” Dolan said. “My roommate and I wanted to live in Blazer Hall, but sophomores don’t always get the best rooms, so now we’re in Meyran for this year, and we hope to get in the new building next year.”
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