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The Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745-967) is
published every Thursday during the
spring and summer terms by students
at the University of Michigan. One copy
is available free of charge to all readers.
Additional copies may be picked up at the
Daily’s office for $2. Subscriptions for fall
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On-campus subscriptions for fall term
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The Michigan Daily is a member of The
Associated Press and The Associated
Collegiate Press.
2
Thursday, August 3, 2017
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
NEWS
Freshmen upset over North Campus
housing, request alternatives online
Waiting for housing
assignment was
“like waiting for
acceptance letters all
over again”
By DYLAN LACROIX
Summer Daily News Editor
While
many
of
her
future
classmates were eager to find fellow
students also living in their residence
halls at first-year student orientation
this past month, LSA freshman
Frances Bray was left in the dark.
“Most people that I talked to
who had already heard about their
housing were on Central Campus or
the Hill and no one had heard about
being on North, so I assumed they
were just going worst to best,” Bray
said.
Later, Bray would discover she
was to be placed in Bursley Hall on
North Campus, a 15- to 20-minute
bus ride away from the University of
Michigan’s Central Campus, where
a majority of classes for first-year
students are held.
Currently,
University
Housing
offers 18 different residence halls
and apartments for undergraduates
to live in during the academic year.
While most of these are located
on Central Campus or in the Hill
Neighborhood, just three are located
on
North
Campus,
comprising
Baits Houses and Northwood III in
addition to Bursley.
After finding out her housing
assignment, Bray was one of many
taking to social media to find any
possible
different
arrangements
for the upcoming year. On a closed
Facebook group for incoming first-
year students called “University of
Michigan Class of 2021,” students
placed on North Campus are offering
to pay to make the switch to Central
Campus.
In an email interview, Bray said
after discussing with her family, she
was willing to pay upwards of $2,000
to fellow students to move to Central
but came up short with students
willing to take the offer.
“We decided that we would have
been willing to spend $2,500 to
switch rooms, I knew it was a long
shot and nothing ended up working
out,” Bray said.
However, one of Bray’s main
concerns with life on North is not
the bus ride to Central every day
but the inconvenience of the North
Campus Recreational Building being
closedfor the entirety of the 2017-2018
academic year due to renovations.
“The biggest impact I think it will
have on my freshman year is not
having a rec center that’s convenient
for me,” Bray said.
In an attempt to not fully remove
Recreational Sports from North
Campus, a small limitedspace within
Bursley Hall will be temporarily
transformed into an exercise space
for regular patrons in addition to the
over 1,200 students who will be living
in Bursley Hall alone.
With so many students seeking
to get off of living on North Campus
freshman
year,
Engineering
freshman Oliver Li decided to
get creative by making an online
fundraiser to help get his friend,
fellow
LSA
freshman
Mahir
Taqbeem, to Central Campus.
In an email interview, Taqbeem
said he was one of the last of his
friends to get his housing assignment
after they had all found out they’d be
living on Central Campus.
“I was waiting pretty long to get
my assignment and all my friends
got their housing a while ago, so my
anticipation was building every day,”
Taqbeem said. “I was actually pretty
confident that I would get something
on Central, and I guess that was my
mistake.”
Since most first-year students will
be on Central Campus, he feels the
social environment on North will be
much more unfriendly and spaced
apart, fearing he won’t have the
same social opportunities as other
students.
“I’m worried I won’t make as many
friends freshman year, but I’m sure I
will get over it if I do end up living in
north,” Taqbeem said. “I heard that
North Campus and Baits II especially
were more antisocial.”
With the fall semester less than six
weeks away, Taqbeem is rushing to
find an alternative option on Central
Campus.
“I’m desperate,” Taqbeem said.
“To get on to any Central Campus
dorm, I would be willing to offer up
to $500 plus football season tickets.”
LSA freshman Nina Chiuchiarelli
said after waiting for months to
receive her housing assignment for
the upcoming semester, she began
to feel frantic but still believed she
wouldn’t be placed in Bursley Hall on
North Campus.
“June and July passed, and we still
had not received our assignment; I
started to get a little frantic, but again
never thought of North Campus,”
Chiuchiarelli said.
Once
receiving
her
housing
placement, Chiuchiarelli said she
looked to online reviews of the dorm
to learn more about where she’d be
living and decided she wanted to
switch.
“I will no longer, technically
speaking, be moving into U of M’s
campus, but instead a foreign place
two miles away from where all of my
classes are,” Chiuchiarelli wrote in an
email. “I looked online for maybe two
hours after finding out where I would
be living this year and every single
review was a poor one that discussed
the isolation, lack of social life,
horrible bus rides, the earlier wake up
that each student not in engineering
must endure (I have 8 AMs every day
and again have no classes on North
Campus) and just the simple fact
that I do not get to reside with the
majority of my peers, or the people
that I will be in classes with.”
For
LSA
freshman
Davinder
Sekhon, the anticipation of receiving
the email for housing assignments
was like applying to college all over
again.
“Waiting for housing assignment
was a bit like waiting for acceptance
letters all over again, with Central
Campus being like getting accepted
and North Campus being rejected,”
Sekhon said.
For
Sekhon,
having
to
live
on North Campus came with a
significant negative impact on his
first-year experience.
“I guess I always just generally
accepted that North Campus was
really bad for social life and getting to
classes,” he said. “I had really wanted
Central Campus because the social
aspect of college is a big thing for me.”
Unlike other freshman placed on
North Campus, Sekhon said he has
come to terms with living on North
and doesn’t feel the need to make any
offers to move to Central.
“I think I’ve just accepted North
Campus now and to be honest the
more I think about it, the less I
come to care about it,” Sekhon said.
“Everyone in my group chats for Baits
II seem cool and we already have
made ourselves a nice community.”
Read more at MichiganDaily.com