I have a confession to make: I am a sellout. No, I haven’t jumped on the Britney Spears bandwagon or started watching Survivor 2; this is much more heinous.
I want to live in the Student Village next year. I’ve been seduced by the breathtaking views, the spacious apartments, the single bedrooms, the clear television reception, the beautiful kitchens with the brand spanking new (okay, brand spanking a year old) appliances, the superior fitness equipment in the basement, the complimentary plants and above all, reliable electricity. I feel like a housing whore.
Around housing selection time, I become just like Snow White’s lesser known eighth dwarf, Bitchy. Of course last year it was easy. Because I lived in Warren Towers, any other place I looked at seemed palatial. But this year it’s different. Possessing a senior housing number significantly increases my options. On-campus housing is practically my oyster.
Off-campus housing, as liberating as it would be, does not comply with my financial aid situation. So I am relegated to the dreaded community selection and anxiously sweating about how good my lottery number will be.
The first headache was assembling roommates and deciding what each person wanted. All three of the people I want to live with next year want singles, as do I. We want an apartment and a meal plan. These factors added up to one place: the Village and all of its decadent splendor.
Last year, my stance on the Student Village was that it costs too much to be in a place where I can neither open the windows nor have guests come and go as I please. I figure that the only way Boston University would ever change the Village’s guest policy (I am talking about some tweaking since complete abolition is out of the realm of possibility) is if students refused to live there. For this to happen, a sizable part of 10 Buick St. would have to go unselected by juniors and seniors. Money talks here at BU (as if you hadn’t noticed), and I didn’t want to be one of the instrumental supporters of the existing guest policy by living there.
Meanwhile, this housing situation has kept me lying awake at night questioning my integrity and the strength of my convictions. My friends rationalize the cost of Village living by making the point that I already pay that much for housing now because of my meal plan, which I don’t even like. That point began the slow chiseling at my fort of resolve. I don’t need to eat! I can make friends with some freshmen in Warren, use their guest meals and survive on what meager foodstuffs I can smuggle out of the dining hall.
Perhaps the wrecking ball that demolished the rest of my argument was that the Village would be completely full next year whether I resist temptation or not. I don’t know if anyone has pondered an official Village boycott, but they might change their minds upon visiting the atrium on the top floor, which looks out onto all of Boston. However, if I stick to my guns, I will be righteously living somewhere not as lavish, which is not terrible. But I would be living there alone, since my roommates have been similarly seduced by the lap of luxury.
Personally, I can live with the guest policy. I am against it on principle. Though annoying, it has never thwarted any of my plans (which is kind of sad if you think about it). I’ve lived with it for two years; I can put up with it for one more. I guess everyone else that will choose the Village during housing season has reasoned similarly.
The idealist Quinne has been defeated by the Quinne that longs to imitate rich people by living somewhere so posh. I’m secretly hoping that no one decides to do internal selection so there will be room for me. I’ve already started planning how I will decorate my single and wondering if I will get sick of the only three meals I know how to cook.
Maybe I will win the lottery and be able to confidently stride into my housing appointment, roommates in tow and demand the corner apartment that the devil sitting on my shoulder whispers to me about. For now, I’ve sold my housing soul for luxurious living without overnight guests or fresh air from open windows.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
