Twitter
Facebook
Reddit
Digg
Tell us what you think!Send a letter to the editor about this or any other article in The Maine Campus.
With room sign-ups for campus housing currently going on, we all know one group has a bit easier than the rest: “the squatters.” Those of us who are retaining our rooms for next year, myself included, are a bit more relaxed and stress free. But as always, I have a bit of a request for the University of Maine’s housing policy.
My humble little room will be the same way I leave it in about a month. However, I dread taking all the belongings out of my single and trekking half my life all the way back to Massachusetts – don’t hold it against me.
It’s not so much the distance as it is carrying chests, bins and file boxes full of the past two years down four flights of stairs and unloading it at my house. If I am squatting my room, why can’t I keep anything in it during the summer months? Before the obvious rebuttal: No, my dorm is not a residence hall for summer semester.
Now, a lot of people are going to call me idiotic. Let me assure you, I’m not talking about leaving my computer or some other over-priced technology in my room all summer, only to show up in September to find it missing.
But let me give you few examples of things I would leave in my room: The four cinder blocks I use as a make-shift book shelf. Needless to say, I do not enjoy lugging these things around like they’re down pillows.
What about my futon mattress? This thing isn’t exactly easy to contort. I don’t know how my parents transported this late addition to my room in their car, but I know it’s not going to fit in my Jeep on the way home.
My comforter and drawers full of useless office supplies can stay here too. Unfortunately, I cannot leave all of these items under UMaine’s current room squatting regulations.
Every system has its glitches, though. You’ll have the rare occasion in which a person will not show up for their following year at school. If that is so, and they have left some of their belongings in their “squatted room” – college yard sale.
I cannot think of a better way for Hall Governing Boards and dorm villages to make some money for future activities than a campus-wide yard sale. Cheap refrigerators. Ugly but functioning TVs. Even the occasional sofa for the early birds.
If a former black bear student doesn’t show within 25 days of the new semester – their TV or small couch ends up being sold to a lucky first-year.
There is already enough fine print on the housing contracts. How about something we could actually benefit from?
I know it’s never pretty. Packing nine months of hard work into your car while you sweat bullets carrying the last load of clothing to your over-packed car. Squatting should give students the ability to leave some of their belongings here.
It’s a benefit for the university to have people so eager to return to the on-campus housing that they squat their rooms. I think it’s about time we start seeing something for this loyalty to on-campus housing. But for those of us too frustrated with the system of packing up even after we’ve squatted our rooms, there are always apartments opening up in the vicinity of our beloved paper mill.
Marshall Dury is a sophomore journalism major.
