The optimism put forth by Jena Moch in her latest article “Dorm life: the real gift of the college experience” shows a truly wonderful side of DU— one that many of my friends were fortunate enough to experience. It seems plenty of students remember their first weeks at the university quite fondly: outgoing roommates, chill RAs, unlimited burgers and fries… The whole scenario seems movie-ready.
But the author herself said it best: “People truly take the smooth transition we had for granted; they think all colleges are like this, just because they all should be.” I completely agree. All colleges should provide excellent support services to their students, especially the first-years.
But the reality is: they don’t. Even at DU, not every student’s dorm experience is as dreamy as the one this article describes.
Its classic image of College Life was pretty much slapped off my face on move-in day.
That morning, I turned my dorm key and unlocked a nightmare inside Centennial Towers. My bed was broken. The electrical on my half of the room didn’t work. The floor’s laundry machine had been ripped off the wall. Raw meat was sitting straight on the racks in our refrigerator (no container involved). Our window well was flooded. The whole room smelled like fish. Rotting fish. And maintenance “was going to try to get to it in the next couple of weeks.”
Needless to say, it wasn’t my best day.
Cramming a room’s worth of stuff back into my ’95 Toyota Camry and moving back home was an utterly—humiliating process. Fortunately, my parents were understanding. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the DU student body was not.
To this day, I hide my commuter status whenever possible because most people just don’t get it. They hold similar beliefs to those expressed in Moch’s article, privileged ideas that claim living on campus is the one and only way to experience higher education.
While I’m sure these people don’t intend to be exclusionary, I find their rhetoric quite isolating. “Without [living in a dorm],” Moch claims, “not only are you missing out on the quintessential college experience, but you will lack the ability to live and constantly interact with all different kinds of people in life.”
Whoa now. Do I feel like I missed out? Yeah, I do. I’ll admit that. But do I think I’m doomed to an eternity of ill social skills and interpersonal failures? Of course not.
It’s naive to assert that the traditional mode is the best way, and even more foolish to think that it’s the only one. In reality, it is a privilege even have the opportunity to try living in a dorm— even if it takes a turn for the worst.
DU students—myself included—take a lot for granted. Most of us come from privileged backgrounds that allow us forget about dorm life’s four-year, $60,000 price tag. But, for many Pioneers, living on campus simply isn’t an option financially.
Furthermore, living in a dorm isn’t possible for students whose disabilities and illnesses, both mental and physical, require alternative living environments.
Of course, most of the student body doesn’t fall into either of these categories. But regardless of your standing within them, limiting a college education to those who sleep on-campus is unacceptable.
I don’t mean to hammer on this author in particular; her claims are part of the American Story that’s been sold and told to us forever. Eighteen? Move out. College. Party. Experiment. Ignore parents. Be independent.
The fact that dorm life is the definition of how all of these things are to be achieved makes it really hard for those who cannot, or choose not, to follow the typical path.
Tolerance is a true mark of the educated mind, and I hope that in the future more Pioneers are able to see their living experiences as unique, not universal.
But dorm sentiments aside, there one point of Moch’s article with which I wholeheartedly agree: “DU is truly an incredible place to call home.” Graduation will mean saying goodbye to a new family: one composed of the friends, teammates, professors, and mentors that are the center of my world… Even though I don’t sleep on campus.
