Once upon a time, there was a time before dormitories. Students lived in houses, apartments, and even did homestays with the townspeople of Oberlin. But of course, as the years passed and Oberlin developed, new buildings sprouted and dorm life at Oberlin began. For upperclassmen, however, there was still the hope of settling into your first house. As a first-year, I dreamed of the big house I would live in: one with all my friends. a porch, and even a kitchen. Now, as a third-year, I wonder if these dreams will even come true.
As of right now, there are 387 beds available in Village Housing, which makes up a little over a third of a graduating class size. The odds are already against us, especially now that the College has made it increasingly difficult to snag an off-campus opportunity. Now, there is one huge building that is making me lose even more hope: Woodland Hall. According to Residence Life’s online description, the new building boasts 402 beds with suite-style living, granting each resident their own room. Amazing, right? Wrong. The new building has already run into a slew of issues and a mountain of complaints. From the sensitive fire alarms to the permanently closed windows, complaints are endless. As I taped a survey onto all of the doors in the dorm, I noticed that in each hall at least one person had a whiteboard on their door with the same message: “Days without a fire alarm: 0.”
Eighty-two percent of respondents said that they can’t see out their window. Although the privacy screens are just an issue with the construction delays, they weren’t even the residents’ biggest concern about the windows. Many residents have complained about the inability to open the windows in their own rooms. ResLife and Facility Operations claim that the state-of-the-art HVAC system brings in 30 percent more clean air than an open window does. So, these unconventional windows are another puzzle piece in Oberlin’s “carbon-neutral” initiative.
Most of the complaints, however, stem from the larger issue at hand: the building simply is not finished. Residents complain of construction noise and the blocked-off outdoor space. This unfinished project would almost be acceptable if Oberlin had planned the project to cater more toward the needs of students. After speaking with Dean of ResLife Mark Zeno, I have come to an unsurprising conclusion about this new residential building: Woodland Hall is just another one of Oberlin’s cost-cutting projects.
The building was built as a result of conversations with students way back in 2019 who wanted more transitional housing, i.e. apartments and suites before moving into traditional Village Housing. I doubt that the Woodland suites, which don’t even have a kitchen, are what those students from six years ago had in mind. Adding kitchens, of course, would have extended the project further and made it too costly for the College. One of the most important lessons that I believe college students should learn is how to take care of yourself. The College seems to be doing everything in their power to stop this. Since everyone is forced to be on a meal plan, students don’t have to know how to cook. Students live in dorms most of their time, and they don’t know how to clean. By having every student live in on-campus housing and pay the College for their meals, the administration can further line their pockets with our money.
This fact would almost be acceptable if they had finished the building on time. Students pay a whopping ~$5,000 per semester for College housing. For the amount that we pay, we deserve to live in a complete building. The more affordable off-campus housing options are slowly being taken away from us, only to be replaced by sub-par housing like Woodland. Now this issue is not limited to Oberlin College. Many other schools are taking a similar path, expanding their campus housing options and becoming top-tier schools with cleaner environments. Schools like UC Berkeley, DePauw University, and Rochester Institute of Technology are all now leading “green” universities. Schools like Penn State boast dorms with more private bathrooms, and others like Clemson University built new housing focusing more in private, apartment-style spaces, much like Woodland Hall. Zeno claims that we are doing all of these things because, “it fits our philosophy, doing things because it’s the right thing to do.” Yet, it seems to me that the “right thing to do” was to cut costs. On top of the lack of kitchens, everything in the building seems just cheap, despite the $55 million budget. The desks and bed frames are made of some plastic material, there are four different types of tile, and there have been numerous complaints about the wiring and electrical issues.
This new building probably saved the College millions, and, with more students living on-campus, it will probably make them a couple more as well. This profit, however, is at the cost of student life. Woodland Hall goes to show how Oberlin College, much like many other private institutions around the country, is no longer a hub of specialized higher education. These institutions are for-profit businesses and are being treated as such by the administration.
