With over 2500 new students enrolled this year, Stony Brook University is once again facing some well expected, but familiar problems with overcrowding. Similar to the congestion they have to face in the classrooms, many incoming students are forced to triple in a room made for two.
Stony Brook University promises housing to all the students as long as they pay their housing deposit by May. As a result, and with more and more students wanting to live on campus, the housing situation worsens every year. In an attempt to resolve this situation, Stony Brook is in the process of constructing new buildings in the west apartments as well as in Kelly Quad, with an addition of 950 beds.
Although some students seemed relaxed about their housing and the lack of space, it is their parents who were anything but happy. Alicia Arso, RA of Gershwin College, Roth, said ‘It’s more the parents who complained.’ Arso has had parents complaining about everything from the room size to the number of people their child will be sharing the room with.
‘All the students understand it,’ Arso said. ‘They knew of the situation beforehand.’ In fact, many students want to stick with their current housing situation. ‘I wouldn’t mind continuing to be tripled, I love my roommates,’ said Jesse Oney, who is tripled in Roosevelt, Wagner. ‘Seriously, they’re amazing.’
‘You are getting closer with two people rather than one,’ Arso said.
Oney, who is double majoring in Journalism and Middle Eastern Studies, said that the biggest challenge she faced in her tripled room was the closet space. ‘It is difficult to find enough space for everything,’ she said. But overall, Onney found the space exceeding her expectations. ‘Really I thought it would be much more cramped and much less enjoyable,’ she said.
For first year biology major Nidhi Shah, the first thing that came to her mind when she saw the room was the size. ‘I didn’t know how we are all going to fit our stuff,’ Shah said. ‘But we managed.’
‘So far, so good. I actually like my roommates and they are more friends than anything, so it has been as really good experience,’ Shah said. ‘Every once in a while we trip over each other but laugh it off,’ she added.
Tiffany Huang, whose room at home is much bigger, said that ‘For three rooms and three people, it is a really small space.’
‘My head hits the ceiling some times,’ complained Huang, a first year computer science major. ‘But if they lower them, then we don’t have the space to put stuff.’
Besides the triples, there are 120 transfer students who are temporarily placed in lounges. ‘It’s transfers in the lounges and they are going to be the first to be reassigned,’ Arso said. ‘They don’t really tell us much.’
