Getting Housing On Campus? Challenge Accepted!
By Griffin Mentzer
Contributing: Greta Redleaf and Marissa Sasso
So. You’re one of many who does not have a place to live on campus. Well guess what? That is entirely your fault and not American University’s. You should have planned that there was not going to be any housing left for juniors and seniors after the 10:30 AM time slot on the second day upperclassmen could even sign up for housing!
AU Housing did everything they could to accommodate you– they even opened two whole floors of Leonard for upperclassmen! Don’t feel too bad if you’re living in Leonard– the university cares about you and that is why they are renovating it this summer (totally not because of the repeated sightings of bats in the basement, obviously).
You should have known you were not going to get housing because of how it went last year! East Campus was filled up so fast last your and yet you still thought there was a chance you were going to get it this year. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like your problem, not A.U.s. It is also your fault that you were not lucky enough to have an early housing slot or planning to live with someone who has one. Guess you should have rubbed that rabbit's foot more.
How are we going to blame American University for the lack of housing on campus? It’s not like their acceptance rate of 64% for the Class of 2025 contributed to the lack of housing at all.
A.U.’s 2021 Campus Plan states that it must provide housing for 67% of full time undergraduate students. American University has 7,953 undergraduates, which means they need to be able to provide housing for 5,328 students to fit in line with this plan. Obviously it is entirely students’ fault that you were one of two thousand students who could not get housing. Why wouldn’t it be? If only there was something that the students could have done to fix this issue… You could have applied to be an RA, be friends with someone who had gotten an earlier time, or planned that there was a chance you were not going to get housing. Maybe you shouldn’t have been so naive thinking you were going to get housing even though 30 minutes into the second day that it opened up for upperclassmen all the housing was basically gone. Now you have no place to live and because of that you’re projecting and blaming your situation on American University.
How dare you blame this phenomenal institution that listens and caters to our every need! But hey. I'm here to help. There’s an R.E.I. in NoMa where you could buy a sleeping bag and sleep on a friend's floor. You could always sleep in Wonk Cat’s old house! If you have enough friends then you could couch surf; your grades definitely will not be affected because of not knowing if you will have a place to stay the night. Another option is paying for a parking pass and sleeping in your car which you can buy for the cheap price of $506 not for a year but per semester!
I guess another option is trying to find a few friends so you can afford the very reasonable college student prices of living in the Avalon or the Berkshires, but a cosigner needs to be able to pay three times the monthly rent or 96k per year since these buildings’ rent is (on average) two thousand a month. That’s probably not a problem for most of the students here since most of the people at this school were born with a silver spoon surgically implanted into their mouth (I’m not exaggerating, almost 70% of A.U. students are from the top 20% of wealth in the country).
I hope you realize that you wouldn't have to consider these options if you were responsible enough to get on campus housing. See you next year when the same thing happens and A.U. can once again tell students about how it is all our fault we have nowhere to live on campus!