Price of dorm life must drop
Jennifer Noy is a sophomore advertising/public relations and psychology major from Austin.

For almost $3,000 a college student could take a Spring Break trip to Hawaii — with a friend. A college student could buy a rather large high-definition plasma TV. Or, this college student could take his or her $3000 and spend it on a four-month stay at one of the luxurious dormitories here at TCU.

For the nearly three grand TCU students fork over for housing, what do we get? Well, for starters we get a soiled mattress atop a rickety wooden frame. In addition, we are provided with an ill-proportioned desk, unsuitable for study materials. And finally, TCU graciously gives us paper-thin walls, so we hear every conversation from our neighbors and consequently they can hear us as well.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, we share bathrooms with foreign odors and unidentified hairs. Good thing we brought flip-flops.

As wonderful as this sounds and at such a bargain price, it is no wonder students choose to live off-campus. The alternative, a rented house or apartment, provides students with a much nicer living area at a more reasonable price. When comparing the two, the price difference over a semester can make a huge impact on a student’s limited budget.

The question remains, why is there such a huge discrepancy in price between the dorms and off-campus living areas?

The apartments and rental homes often provide much nicer living spaces. Students have their own rooms and even private bathrooms. These off-campus residences have convenient parking, kitchens and extra living space.

So for a higher price, students living on-campus park far away from their dorms, have less space (and no private space) and share bathrooms with 10-20 peers.

But I do have to point out the benefits of dorm life at TCU: location, location, location! I’m sure I am not the first to say that rolling out of bed ten minutes before class is nice. The library, the Main and the Recreation Center are all minutes away.

In addition, TCU students are provided with high-speed Internet and more cable channels than I knew existed. All this is rolled into our semester price.

But are the benefits enough to warrant the high price? No! As TCU students, we pay thousands of dollars for our education. We put up with a yearly increase in tuition rates and pay outrageous prices for “food” in the main (but that is a whole other story).

With all that said, the last thing we need as TCU students is a steep and unjustified residence hall rate. Surely, a university like TCU, with a multimillion-dollar endowment could find some way to redistribute its wealth to alleviate the burden of unreasonable dormitory fees.

I hope that in the future TCU will make the financial adjustments necessary to assist on-campus residents as they struggle to make ends meet. TCU, although one of the cheapest private schools in Texas, is still expensive. Give us a break on housing.