Housed in two area hotels, 173 freshmen have spent the last seven weeks distanced from traditional dorm life, their classes and at times the opposite sex.
Some students have mixed feelings about living in hotels rather than dorms and said their isolation from other students in their buildings is a main concern though the size of rooms and weekly maid service makes up for it.
‘The rooms are really big,’ said Kevin Schrecengost, a College of Arts and Sciences freshman and resident of the Holiday Inn.
School of Management freshman James Brodie said he has enjoyed the armoire left in his Hotel Commonwealth room complete with TV, DVD player, cable and HBO.
The 93 students living at the Hotel Commonwealth in Kenmore Square and the 80 students at the Holiday Inn in Brookline are the result of Boston University’s policy that guarantees all undergraduates can continue living on campus while at BU, according to Director of Housing Marc Robillard.
He said the freshman are split up because the Hotel Commonwealth cannot hold all the overflow and still function as a hotel.
As BU has used the Hyatt Regency and Cambridge Radisson to house freshmen in the past, Robillard said the Office of Housing has found that about two-thirds of a hotel should remain open for guests. The overflow of students fills one-third of both the Hotel Commonwealth and the Holiday Inn.
The need for two hotels has also caused a separation of the sexes, as the Holiday Inn houses only men while the Hotel Commonwealth houses both men and women. Robillard said the Holiday Inn is completely male because the Office of Housing decided to keep all 46 women together at Hotel Commonwealth.
While students said getting their bathrooms cleaned is a perk, they do not always enjoy maid service.
‘One time I put all my stuff on the bed, but they threw it on the floor anyway,’ Schrecengost said.
Even though the Holiday Inn has a hot tub, pool and a small fitness room, Schrecengost said he has never used them.
His roommate Andrew Yang, a School of Hospitality Administration freshman, criticized Robillard’s estimate that the Holiday Inn is only an eight-minute walk from campus.
‘It’s probably an eight-minute walk straight up St. Paul [Street], but that’s not where we have classes,’ Yang said.
Schrecengost said the Kenmore Classroom Building is 20 minutes away.
‘I associate it with being a commuter student,’ he said. ‘They gave us free T passes, which is nice, but the T’s not really scheduled. It’s a pain for everyone.’
Schrecengost suggested that BU build more housing to accommodate the extra freshmen.
However, Robillard said BU is already in the process of finding more beds for students and has no way to exactly predict the number of continuing students and incoming freshman because BU accepts 12,000 students each year and about one-third of those choose to attend.
‘If I’m off by 1 percent, I’ve got 120 students with no place to live,’ Robillard said.
Robillard said the demand for on-campus housing has increased every year since 1992. Although opening the Student Residences at 10 Buick St. in 2000 resulted in 817 more beds, Robillard said the apartment-style housing also attracted more students back to campus.
‘Building a building like 10 Buick St. doesn’t meet your requirements for housing,’ Robillard said. ‘It increases your demand for housing.’
Last year, 470 out of 4,600 freshman lived in two Cambridge hotels, making the 173 students living in hotels this year a significant drop.
No hotels were used in 2001, as the 3,600-student freshman class was smaller than usual, and BU turned the old Howard Johnson hotel into a dorm at 545 Commonwealth Ave. in 2001.
The 93 students at Hotel Commonwealth take up about 50 rooms, including an Office of Residence Life, two study lounges and a social lounge.
Although the majority of students live in doubles, some are in triples.
Most of the time freshmen are the only ones on the second and third floor of the five-story hotel, but some rooms on those floors are open to guests if necessary, Robillard said.