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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 
term, starting in September, via U.S. mail 
are $110. Winter term (January through 
April) is $115, yearlong (September 
through April) is $195. University affiliates 
are subject to a reduced subscription rate. 
On-campus subscriptions for fall term 
are $35. Subscriptions must be prepaid. 
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

