Card key locks, lots of closet space and a sink in every room. These are the fevered dreams of those condemned to live on campus. The remodeled rooms of Adams, Biddle, Johnson, Read and Bromley Halls seem to the outsider the closest thing to the holy grail of rooms. Clean, comfortable and above all, air-conditioned, many a student have fought to gain the right to live in these residence halls. But these dormitory darlings now carry a larger price for the privilege of university hospitality.
During the summer, students living in the remodeled dorms received a nasty surprise in a 6.5 percent increase to their room bills for the year. What had happened was that a few well-meaning parents called to complain. They asked a simple question: Why should their sons or daughters living in, say, Sargent Hall, pay the same rate as someone with a remodeled room in Biddle Hall? It is an understandable question considering the cost of room and board. Of course, Ohio University's reply was less than satisfying. Rather than charging less for crumbling residence halls, it decided to charge more for remodeled rooms.
Administrators seized yet another opportunity to milk more money out students. In some ways, it is hard to blame them. In a time when tuition is frozen, the university decided to make up some of the money on room and board.
There should be a difference among room rates but not the ones the university instituted. Someone living a new room should pay a little extra, and someone living in an old room should pay less. After all, not all rooms are equal on campus. Why should someone living without A/C, new furniture or a sink be charged the same as someone in a remodeled room?
However, to raise rates on renovated rooms, instead of lowering rates on sub-par ones, is simply shameful.
Giving such little notice to affected students is deplorable as well. By summer, it is too late to change rooms ' if a student did not want to pay the increased rate, he or she would have had to rely on the luck of the draw to even end up with any kind of residence hall room. It doesn't seem quite fair to penalize students for not being able to read administrators' minds.
Students are people, not dollar signs, and should be treated as such.
Editorials represent the majority opinion of the executive editors.-
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Students penalized by new dorm rates
