In choosing to live off campus, students take on the reality that their housing is no longer guaranteed to be clean and safe.
This reality is filled with mold ridden showers, holes in walls, and infestations of various vermin and bugs. Students at Emmanuel face such issues when they move into both apartments and satellite housing provided by the college.
Carlie Capell and Kelley Turner, both of the class of 2016, live on Park Drive. These apartments are around a 10 minute walk from campus, providing they don’t get stuck at the intersections along the way. Upon moving in, both Capell and Turner were faced with the leftover grime of previous tenants.
Turner experienced mold in her bathroom along with several unknown substances, there was food still in the fridge, a sticky coating on the kitchen floor, and walls covered in dust. Capell experienced something similar. Thirteen people lived in their five bedroom apartment before them and left the apartment a mess. However, while Turner, her roommates and their mothers were left to clean their apartment for six hours, Capell’s landlord called in a cleaning service.
Jess daSilva ’16 lives at City View, a satellite campus put on by Emmanuel College. Upon moving into her apartment, daSilva was welcomed with holes in the walls and a broken dishwasher. Since moving in, daSilva and her three roommates have been faced with bedbugs as well as a mouse. It has taken two weeks to deal with the bedbugs issue, leaving the girls living out of trash bags.
On the Emmanuel campus, the dorms are cleaner. Sarah Salerno ’17 spoke on her experiences on living in the dorms. Her freshman year, she lived next to the RA and was always called out for being ‘too loud’. This year, the bathroom has been the biggest issue for Salerno. In the first month someone pooped in a shower on her floor and the soap dispensers were contaminated she said.
Regardless of where students live, they face the issue of cleanliness. Students all felt some degree of safety wherever they lived.
Abbi Matheson 