Ross residents should pay less

By Mitch Riportella

Last weekend, I visited a friend at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, and slept in his dorm. I guessed he had chosen the Harry Potter housing package, because the glorified closet of a room was quite similar to the Dursely’s cupboard under the stairs.
As I toured the campus, I was shocked to find that many dorms of greater quality cost relatively the same as his.
I began to wonder if a similar situation was taking place at Butler University, and set out to do some research.
Ross and Schwitzer are only $300 less to live in than Residential College, according to Butler’s website.
But are Ross and Schwitzer really that great of a value when we compare them to ResCo?  The answer in my opinion, is no.
Don’t get me wrong, Ross Hall is great. Its long list of faults gives it character. I honestly would rather live in Ross than ResCo, but that is not because I believe it is a nicer building.
Ross Hall, to me, is like your first car in a way. It is definitely not the nicest thing you have ever driven, but it is yours. Ross Hall is many students first taste of freedom and how could you hate that?
But all that is purely nostalgic. ResCo blows Ross out of the water in terms of monetary value.
Ross could be more than $300 cheaper solely based on the fact it is not air-conditioned. After living in Ross, I have actually come to appreciate the feeling of being dry, as I sweated profusely for the greater part of the summer months.
Freshman McCarty Maxwell said his first weeks in Ross were awful.
“I sweat so much,” McCarty said. “I was going through four or five outfits a day. You were just soaked all the time and there was nothing you could do.”
Heat is typically only an issue in Ross and Schwitzer for a few weeks. But when you have five fans going and it still feels like a sauna built in the fires of Mordor, $300 seems like chump change.
Even aside from air conditioning, the quality of ResCo is greater than Ross in every way I can think of.
“The actual rooms are bigger and a lot nicer,” said freshman ResCo resident Brianne Mannell.“Obviously it has air conditioning, there’s only four people to a bathroom, and there’s a dining hall downstairs.”
Mannell lives in ResCo because she has asthma.
“The only part I don’t like is that it was a littler harder to make friends when we first got here,” Mannell said.
Adjusting to a new freshman lifestyle could be a lot easier surrounded by students who are going through similar experiences.
Public bathrooms are not favorable, and having to camp out for hours to finish laundry is not fun. But having friends live in the same building is worth the hassle.
Every freshman should live in either Ross or Schwitzer purely for the sentimental reward.
However, students are not paying for only sentimental rewards.
An experience one gains from living in a particular building has no bearing on the quality of the living situation.
Ross and Schwitzer are not dumps but are definitely not of the same value as ResCo. That fact should be reflected more in our bills.
Students simply do not get their money’s worth in Ross and Schwitzer, based on prices of the other living facilities.
Though I am not intending to bash Ross, it seems unfair to have to pay relatively the same price to live in a place with none of ResCo’s perks.

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