Rooms For Improvement
Whittier College housing may be cheap, but it isn’t always easy.
Dorm life at Whittier College is a mixed bag. In other words, some students have it better than others depending on where they reside.
There are seven dorm on the Whittier campus (10 if you want to count the Harris buildings separately). Living in one of these buildings costs students at least thousand of dollars, but prices vary depending on how share the room. Having three roommates will cost the student about $5,224 annually according to Whittier College’s 2016–2017 Housing and Meal Agreement. Two roommates in a dorm room cost about $5,738. The fewer students in a dorm room, the higher the price. Living in a double room (1 roommate) will cost each student approximately $7,198 annually and living in a single student room will really cost you: $8,328.
That may sound like a lot, but it’s a bargain compared to other small colleges such as Pomona College, which has about 1,663 students paying an average dorm price of $9,055 and Occidental College which has 2,062 students who pay an average of $14,968 for their dorm room. So, Whittier students don’t pay as much, but are we getting what we pay for?
The dorms on campus vary in quality and students report that some facilities have frequent issues. Wanberg is known to have problems with water, wifi, and and power outages. Having opened in 1949, Wanberg is one of the oldest buildings on campus. Inside, the hallways feel crammed and tight.
A junior and sophomore, I spoke with, who asked to remain anonymous, shared their thoughts on about living in Wanberg. The junior said that he enjoyed that the building was quiet and spacious, and the sophomore agreed, but both reported frequent small power outages during the beginning of the year and one major outage that happened on Sunday, October 29th, 2017. The power stayed off for nearly nine hours before it came back on at 5:00 PM. While this might be an inconvenience for most, it could be more problematic for students with physical disabilities considering Wanberg is a slightly long walk from the Campus Inn, the library, or other lower campus buildings.
Another issue facing a majority of dorms is physical accommodations for second or third-floor residents. Whittier College has ramps on the first floor for most dorms and most students who need physical accommodations are accomodated on the the first floor, but athletes, or others suffering injuries, must still trudge up stairs to reach their rooms. Only Turner Hall has an elevator that reaches all floors.
Turner Hall is the building that houses upperclass students and is seemingly the nicest (or at least cleanest) of all the dorms. Out front is a large yard with 20 chairs for lounging and a barbecue set that doesn’t look like its been used in a while.
Inside, the lounge is large, complete with a pool table, several couches, an enclosed room to watch TV and a piano in the lounge. There are enclosed study rooms throughout the dorm and the rooms are air-conditioned, which is not the case with most dorm rooms on campus. There is even a Let’s Talk counseling office at the front of the lobby. (This service is also offered in Johnson building). Second-years student Stephee Bonifacio said the WiFi rarely falters.
So far, so good, right? But nothing is perfect and a student who asked to remain anonymous said the dorms have had problems with pests like termites and spiders. “The termites are in the rooms. Although mine has only a few, I hear from others that there’s a lot. They are starting to get out of hand.” Another student reported ceiling leaks coming from the first floor women’s restroom.
Speaking of restrooms, there have been a series of issues with Ball Hall’s plumbing. Kevin Weissinger, a third year, has said that the water had been cut off from the entire building three times during the first two months of the 2017 fall semester. “We were not told in advance that this would happen, and we didn’t know when the water would be back on,” said Weissinger. “I had to go to the 24 hour commuter lounge to use the restroom and I was almost late to class. Even the RA on duty didn’t know when it would come back on because [the water workers] gave a wrong estimate.”
Toilets in Ball also seem to have a mind of their own, sometimes flushing repeatedly after use until maintenance comes to fix the problem. I had used one of these toilets while hanging out at Ball Building.
Another Ball Resident, Amanda Hessey, says not all of the showers in the building have curtains, leaving her sometimes uncomfortable with showering. Without the shower curtain, the only thing blocking the student and the outside is a blurry glass door. The problem is not exclusive to Ball Building though. Taking a look at other dorms, such as Stauffer Hall, shower curtains are inconsistently placed.
More than 200 freshman students live in Stauffer. There, the first-floor lobby offers a variety of activities such as a pool table, a ping-pong table, and a TV surrounded by couches. Seems like a nice place to hang out and play some games. But, there’s a price to pay. Well, there is if something breaks.
Fae Bateman, a resident of Stauffer Building, complains that whenever someone breaks something like the pool cue, the replacement cost comes out of everyone’s pockets, not just those who did the damage. She says in such instances it’s up to the dorm residents to “self police.” Also, smoking in the dorm has been an issue. “If there are people smoking, it causes the fire alarms go off,” says Bateman. “Sometimes it happens at three in the morning.” When the fire alarms go off, students have to evacuate from their rooms.
Bateman also reports that the WiFi has been inconsistent, making internet-based research and recreation difficult at times. “I hope next year or next semester that people take care of it,” she said.
The major complaint about Johnson Hall is noise and the lack of air-conditioning. Freshman Uma Shiv says that nights are often disrupted after the 10:00 p.m. quiet hours with the sound of rowdy boys making a ruckus. As with all the dorms, save Turner and Harris, there is no air conditioning in Johnson, which is a problem when early-semester heatwaves can push temperatures over 100 degrees for days.
While dorming at Whittier College may not be as expensive as similarly sized schools in the region, there is significant room for improving the quality of life in the dorms and, by extension, on the campus as a whole.
