Less than three weeks into hotel living, Boston University students living in the Hyatt Regency Cambridge and Holiday Inn Brookline are already mourning their January move to on-campus housing for the spring semester, when they will leave cushy amenities, including room and maid service.
College of Arts and Sciences freshman Robert Mundy, who lives in the Holiday Inn in Brookline, said if he could have his Residence Hall Association representative do one thing, it would be to keep students in the hotels for a whole year.
“I’ve made closer friends here in two weeks than I did in four years of high school,” he said.
CAS freshman Laurel Beede said she was unhappy when she first found out about her housing assignment.
Upperclassmen always look down on students who have to live in the Hyatt, Beede said, “but it’s already making me sad that I’ll have to live apart from all the friends I’ve made here.”
Office of Residence Life Director David Zamojski said his office is sensitive to the fact that living in a hotel is a one-semester experience for new students.
The office tries to engage students in campus life to minimize the sense of separation from campus, Zamojski said.
“Students who are engaged in college and take advantage of all BU has to offer will fare great,” Housing Director Marc Robillard said. “Students who hold back and are not engaged have a harder time no matter where they live.”
There are 484 students housed in the Hyatt, including 180 transfer students. In the Holiday Inn, there are 120 students, 20 of whom will leave at the end of September to move in to the recently renovated dormitory at 163 Bay State Rd..
BU’s demand for hotel housing has varied over the last five years. In Fall 2001, no hotels were needed. This was also the year the former Howard Johnson Hotel at 575 Commonwealth Ave. was converted into a student residence.
But in 2002, he said there was an “extraordinarily large freshman class” and the university was forced to house 487 students in the Hyatt Regency and Radisson, both in Cambridge. BU was also leasing a property from Emmanuel College for about five or six years, he said. That contract ended in 2002.
In 2003, a “small” group of 180 students were housed in Hotel Commonwealth and 86 in the Holiday Inn in Brookline. In 2004, BU placed 184 students in the Hyatt and 86 in the Holiday Inn.
College of General Studies freshman Chelsea Hildreth said some students hate living at the Hyatt. But they could also just blame the hotel situation for not meeting lots of people, she said.
Students in the hotels receive maid service twice a week and have private bathrooms and air-conditioning. At the Hyatt, students get room-service food for half-price and have access to the hotel gym and pool. At the Holiday Inn, students receive free T passes.
CAS freshman Chantal Mendes said she usually walks because the T is too inconvenient.
“It’s the most social living area on campus,” CAS freshman Jason Katims said of the Holiday Inn. “If I could’ve requested as a freshman to live at the Holiday Inn, I would have.”
Despite loving living at the Holiday Inn, Katims said he has still found going out on the weekends fairly difficult, especially as a male student.
“It’s hard to find parties,” he said. “The only parties I’ve found are through Hillel.”
Hotel decorations are the basis for each student’s room. The decorations are bolted to the walls and cannot be moved. Students cannot use tape or sticky tack to mount any items to the walls, including posters and pictures. The furniture is the same as on-campus dorm furniture, aside from a bureau furnished by the hotel for televisions.
Students in the hotels do not have “Late Nite Cafes” but can still use their dining points to order Domino’s pizza.
“The [shuttle] bus is definitely an issue,” Hildreth said. “It’s not reliable. It’s supposed to come every 10 minutes, but it doesn’t.”
Hildreth said she offers to pay for cab rides home on weekends. The Escort Security Service will also walk students to both hotels.
CAS sophomore Jessica Schlesinger lived in the Holiday Inn last year. While Schlesinger said she enjoyed living at the hotel, she said she benefited the most by joining a play with a theater group on campus.
“You didn’t get the open-door feeling of Warren Towers,” she said. “But that was not as important for me.”
Other amenities, including laundry service, are also absent in hotel living. Students at the Hyatt do not have any laundry facilities, but they can take their laundry in the shuttle to an on-campus laundry facility. The Holiday Inn has laundry facilities in the basement, but Mendes said it is $4 for a load.
At the end of the fall semester, students living in the hotels will pack up all of their belongings in boxes furnished by BU. The school will store their boxes and deliver them to their rooms at the beginning of the spring semester.
The requests for housing for the second semester are spread all over campus, which makes accommodating individual needs easier, Robillard said. Near the end of the fall semester, housing representatives will meet with students individually to try to place them in their preferred housing option.