All around Boston this weekend, new and returning college students moved into their apartments and dormitories with what many described as relative ease.
About 250,000 Boston area students moved into new homes over the weekend, but despite the massive influx of students, most said difficulties were rare.
Alicia Harvie, a Tufts University sophomore and resident of Downington, Penn., moved into her apartment in about a half an hour in what she said was a quick move-in.
‘The only problem was there were no elevators in our house,’ Harvie said. ‘Only one or two houses at Tufts have elevators, so we had to carry stuff up the stairs to our fourth floor apartment. But there were people helping out with moving things, so it wasn’t that bad.’
Tufts freshmen and transfer students moved into the university beginning last Wednesday before most of the upperclassmen, causing a great rush that settled down after the middle of the week, Harvie said. She also noted that traffic around Tufts was not too bad, since police were monitoring the streets.
‘You could definitely drive around the area,’ she said.
Ariel Safdie, a junior at Brandeis University, said that moving into her apartment was a breeze.
‘They spread out the move-in over a four day period…so that nothing gets too congested,’ she said.
Safdie said Brandeis was more than prepared for its 3,051 students to return to campus.
‘It was great,’ Safdie said. ‘The parking lot was within a couple of feet from the dorm. Move-in was an easy, fun process this year.’
Some students encountered difficulties, however, which primarily arose in neighborhoods off campus during the otherwise smooth move-in weekend.
In Brighton, 10 Boston College students could not move into their apartment during the weekend because a half-dozen violations were found in the building, according to a Boston Globe article.
Lisa Timberlake, spokeswoman for the Boston Inspectional Services Department, told The Globe that the building could only legally house four tenants. Additionally, among the violations found in the apartment, were ‘rat droppings, exposed wiring and flammable chemicals.’
Closer to the Boston University campus, students experienced less severe hassles.
Jamie Fairstone, a BU sophomore in the College of General Studies, had to wait a few hours before she and her roommates could fully move into their Allston apartment.
‘One of the tenants who lived there didn’t have to leave until noon Monday,’ Fairstone said. ‘We arrived the day before when we technically couldn’t move in until noon Monday. It was merely luck of the draw.’
Fairstone described the scene in Allston-Brighton as ‘chaotic.’ Some of the scenes on the street, according to Fairstone, included ‘Ryder trucks, U-Haul trucks, cars parked, double parked and trucks getting towed.’
Matt Graham, a BU sophomore in the College of Engineering, moved out of his Gardner Street apartment over the weekend and experienced slight trouble initially. Graham said his landlord was being difficult when one of the girls in his apartment had trouble moving out.
‘He wanted us out of there by midnight on Sunday and one of the girls couldn’t move out until the next day,’ Graham said. ‘So she called him up, asked if she could stay until 10 a.m. the next day, and he flat out refused.’
Although Graham experienced that setback, he said things went smoothly otherwise, including the process of cleaning the apartment after a summer of use.
‘It wasn’t that bad,’ Graham said. ‘We didn’t really clean up, we basically just left it how we found it.’
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