Welcome to San Diego State, where every month students pay their incredibly high rent to live in subpar housing and inadequate living situations.
College housing has created many interesting situations for students whether it’s horrible roommates, gross dorm life or awful house arrangements. If there is one thing college teaches you, it’s that living with people can be hard, landlords suck and that dorms are the worst. It seems like every roommate is claiming they are the only one who ever cleans and a lot of the time living in close proximities with people creates a downward spiral of interesting roommate situations.
Every student has in some way experienced the negative effects of college living, whether it’s from living in a small space with multiple people or the poor qualities of on-campus housing.
Kathleen Fong, nutrition sophomore
“I lived in Cuic freshman year so I shared a suite with eight other girls. One of the girls was hard to live with to say the least. She used to sing at the top of her lungs in the common area FaceTiming her friends and harmonizing with them over the phone. She also used to leave out cups and bowls of food until they started molding. Her favorite pastime consisted of having really intimate conversations over the phone, we all unfortunately had to listen to. As the school year went by, several fights broke out, one in which our RA had to come in and break up. It got to the point where our suite offered to pay her money to leave but she declined. So by the year’s end we printed out 100 room/hall switch requests and taped them to cover the walls, in the entrance of our suite, in her bathroom, on the ceiling above her top bunk, her desk, everywhere. She took the hint and finally moved out.”
Josh Goldstein, chemical engineering sophomore
“My freshman year I lived in Chappy and if that wasn’t already hard enough, everyone in the building was constantly getting sick from the air spreading through the vents. At the end of the year we heard a rumor that hand, foot and mouth disease was going around and then the building emailed us confirming it was true. We all had to wash our hands a lot and sanitize every door handle around the place constantly to avoid getting the incredibly contagious disease.”
Delanie Farley, biology sophomore
“For my BIO 204 lab, one of our assignments was to take home a petri dish and leave it open for an hour, then let it grow for five days. I chose to place mine in the kitchen of my apartment at Aztec Corner. After five days what grew on the petri dish was mold and bacteria. I repeated this experiment again in the living room of my apartment and mold was again found on the petri dish.”
Paula Gutman, undeclared freshman
“At the beginning of the year there was mold found in people’s rooms covering their beds and everything in Maya forcing them to move to a different building. It’s horrible when you think that your dorm room is one of the only places that feels like home and it’s overtaken by mold making everyone sick all the time. It’s disgusting and I wish it was clean.”
Elexia Partida, public administration senior
“We had a roommate who would always steal our shampoo and conditioner, go through my desk and use my things without asking, stomping around, putting the garbage bags in the living room instead of out in the garage and talking on speakerphone around the house early in the morning. When she sensed we would get annoyed at her for doing this, she moved out and only told us a week before and said it was our problem to find a new roommate. She picked up all her stuff and moved out and now we have to all split extra rent every month. We haven’t spoken to her since.”
Whether it is mold, roommates or rats, unfortunately the horrors shared by all students is just a part of the college experience. Just know that you are not alone if you have experienced one of the many housing horror stories.
