For 470 Boston University students, freshman year has been far from routine. Their first several months away from home have been spent physically separated from the rest of the BU campus, without the normal freshman dorm experiences. Now, BU’s Cambridge Hyatt and Radisson residents have been relegated to an unpredictable residential future. In the interest of student happiness and well-being, BU administrators should allow students to remain in their Cambridge residences for the remainder of the year.
Despite their desires to the contrary, BU’s Cambridge residents will likely be placed randomly throughout the campus, assigned as fillers wherever they can be fit within Boston University’s massive residential system. Floors will be split up and developing bonds between roommates shattered. After unconventional first semesters as college students, stashed in hotels separated from main campus by a river, BU administrators are risking further unhappiness if they insist on placing every student in on-campus housing.
Administrators should listen to Radisson student residents who began collecting signatures last week in an attempt to stay in the hotel for the remainder of the year. They have earned the chance for, at the very least, a small amount of residential stability. The relationships that have been germinating over the past several months should be allowed a natural second semester to take root. The unlucky freshmen saddled with constant uncertainty throughout their first semester at BU should not be further burdened with random placement in unfamiliar BU dormitories. They should be allowed to stay among the freshman floormates with whom they have done laundry, played “dorm assassins” and shared irreplaceable freshman memories.
After inconveniencing them for their first months in college, the university owes it to the BU students of Memorial Drive to continue the school’s deal with the Cambridge hotels. The residents’ unlucky housing situations are the direct result of poor planning. And not only should the university cater to the needs of the school’s Cambridge freshmen, it should not let its economic priorities override the need for freshman housing.
BU should shoulder the burden of providing for its neglected freshmen. They should not expect students who have already lived through a semester of unpredictability and isolation to uproot and resettle in unfamiliar surroundings.
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