Not Living Here

RPI Housing

RPI provides all kinds of “housing” for all kinds of students. Apparently, in the interests of the lowest common denominator, this housing takes the form of civilian dwellings not unlike those of Berlin or Paris during World War II. RPI does not discriminate housing to any student, save for sex, class, and your lottery number, and does its best to maintain a standard in ill repair, disinterest and in general, a lack of capital investment. Be especially wary if your dorm room is on “future development” land.

Residence Life at RPI

It is in the best interests of the school that as much responsibility as possible be removed from the students, and to this end a set of rules has been created for the dorm residents. You did not know these rules when you arrived here, despite the fact that you were required to sign a paper stating that you would abide by them before you knew what they were. You had to sign a contract, one of the terms of which was that you would follow the rules laid out in the Rensselaer Handbook concerning rooms. This is morally equivalent to being required to sign a two-hundred page contract without ever seeing more than page one.

In the interests of enlightening you who have not had the chance to read The Rensselaer Handbook, we present a list of the responsibilities of the Dorm Resident as it is most often interpreted.

Responsibilities of Dorm Residents

• Respect for other’s property, except for stereos, liquor and sexual partners.
• Respect for and abidance by Institute rules, otherwise known as the “Knees Upon the Ground” clause.
• Undisturbed hours for study, sleep, sex and random behavior.
• Maintenance of the residence hall, and in particular, the Resident Assistant, one’s door painting and most important, the porcelain urinals!

Distribution of Housing

Housing is distributed at RPI in a manner not unlike the system used in most state prisons. If you are a Freshman, then the choice is simple. Mainly, you don’t have one. The women reside in either BARH or one of the all-women dorm floors. For the men the housing solution is much more simple. Build shabby and relatively cheap buildings and pack the whole male population into them, without regard for personal tastes, space or even cleanliness. Soon the guys will be slinging their own trash down the halls, but who cares? It can be hosed down before the spring tours are on campus.

Once the freshman year is over, every student has the right to choose the place of residence that he or she would like. Most of these students then immediately panic and run to the school for housing, out of fear of taking responsibility for their own lives. They have been conditioned to depend on the Administration. In reality, there are four types of housing available to (almost) any upperclassman: On-campus, Institute Apartments, Fraternity or Off-campus. These are very different types of living and one should consider the benefits and detriments of each very carefully before embarking on living in Troy.

On-Campus Housing

On-campus housing is not the best standard of living for RPI upperclassmen. RPI is one of the most expensive landlords in Troy, and the school demands payment up front. A breakage fee is charged to each student in order to provide the school with insurance money so that it can cover the costs of damage done by random vandals, at everyone’s expense. On-campus housing requires one to use the IBX Phone system, which is RPI’s own version of AT&T, and which is slightly more expensive, too; the only alternative is no phone service at all. Dorm kitchen facilities are reasonable, but none of the expendables involved in running a kitchen are provided (e.g. paper towels, cleanser, sponges … ). Most of the bathrooms are public in some fashion or another, as are the lounges, kitchens and basements. Security regularly warns residents of crime hazards which are still too numerous to be effectively controlled, especially during student vacations. Break-ins are fairly common. The front doors to most dorms are left unlocked, so almost anyone who wants to enter a dorm can. Campus Security can enter any room on campus and search if they have “reasonable cause”, which is far more than Troy Police can do to Troy residents. Finally, the amount of personal space, that is, the room one individual has to himself, is very limited with on campus housing. The gist of this is that RPI is probably the most expensive and impersonal landlord in Troy, for when a student lives on campus, RPI not only controls his academic life, but his home life as well.

The method of acquiring on-campus housing is the housing lottery. The concept behind the lottery is simple. The student who enters the lottery is betting $100 that the Office of Housing is going to give them a good room to live in. This may not seem so strange to some, but it becomes clear just how far the odds are against the student when one realizes that most of the “good rooms” are being squatted in, and thus are not going to be on the lottery board anyway! The lottery becomes even more of a political battle when various minority factions claim exemptions to the rules, for reasons ranging from realistic (e.g. handicapped students) to simply selfish.

Institute Apartments

The Institute very generously provides apartments for its students in a similar manner to most other landlords in Troy. As mentioned earlier, it does expect full rent in advance, which is not a very nice thing for any landlord to do, and in addition, it does not provide nearly the quality of housing that even the merest slug would expect.

There are three main housing complexes open to Tute students: the Colonie apartments, the RAHP apartments, and the various mumble-wyck apartments. We shall deal with each of them in turn.

Colonie Apartments

The Colonie apartments are a great place to live if you love your neighbors, because you are going to be hearing lots and lots from them. The walls are made of cardboard; so are the roofs, and the rainwater has a fine time playing in your kitchenette. A room holds two people, and is not very much larger than the tiny little thing you lived in all Freshman year; to justify the higher price, they install a “room divider” which is made of highest quality burlap, give you a joke of a little kitchen to play around with, and part shares in a bathroom. The place was built on the cheap many years ago, and later sold to RPI when it couldn’t make a profit on its own, as a residential hotel. There are some fifty rooms in each building, and you will probably be able to hear what is going on in most of them. There are actually four buildings, and there isn’t enough parking space for any of them.

The other main problem with Colonie is the insect infestation. The actual residents of the buildings are the cockroaches, of which there are very many; the human beings are there on sufferance. The Tute is aware of the problem, and continually sends pest control crews around, usually about once a week during the early fall and spring months. This has had only one noticeable effect, however; the breed of cockroaches currently in residence in Colonie is immune to all known insecticides.

RAHP

The RAHP apartments all cluster around Colvin Circle, a road which is apparently owned by the Tute. They are not really a part of the RPI campus; the U. S. Snail delivers to them directly, and until recently, they did not even get to use the RPI phone system. Now there is the IBX, and everyone has to use that, and so it costs more than AT&T ever did, but, that’s progress. However, back to our story.

A RAHP apartment is very much a group experience. There will be a group of four of you there, all year, unless you want to pay lots and lots of money for a storage room. Or two. As a matter of fact, it is almost worth it, because there is very little storage space in a RAHP apartment. In any event, unless you sign up for it as a group, there will be three other people who you have never seen before, in this one apartment, sharing the same kitchen, living space, and bathroom.

Again, the walls are not made of very thick stuff. There are four units in a building, making sixteen people, who will hear almost your every word. However, the insect infestations are pretty much under control.

The mumble-wycks

There are many wycks to choose from, all of which have their advantages and disadvantages. Stackwyck shares many of the same faults with the RAHP apartments; there are four of you, who may even have known each other once, if you’re lucky, sharing the one apartment. The apartment is smaller, of course, so you pay more per square foot; and there are many more units in a building, so the amount of noise goes up. According to the people who have lived both here and in RAHP, however, Stackwyck is somewhat of a better place to live, because of the availability of storage space, and also because a better class of people seem to live there.

Rensselaerwyck (how do they think up these names?), which is located up behind the field house, is made of even cheaper stuff than any other building on the campus. It, too, is infested with cockroaches. It is intended primarily as housing for married couples with children; we seriously don’t know how children could be expected to live in such a place.

Most of the people who live here seem to be Asiatic. It seems that many Asiatic families are formed right here in Troy, and these people seem to think that the advantages of living near the Tute outweigh the disadvantages of living in Tute housing.

Bryckwyck, between Rensselaerwyck and Sunset Terrace, is actually the best of a BAD lot. It is intended for married couples with no children, and seems to fit that task rather well. There are some eight units per building, and the walls are fairly thick: there are actually stairwells between the apartments, in most cases. Room is a little bit on the skimpy side, but there are supposed to be only two people living there, anyway; the amount of privacy is rather high, which is nice.

Fraternity Life

Living in a fraternity is obviously a very social experience. Choosing to live in one of these places requires the consent of a large group of people. All of these people are officially your “brothers” (or “sisters”), whether or not you can stand their personal habits; even if you can’t, you must still put up with your house mates. What is more, you have to make sure that they can put up with you. In addition, a large amount of your free time will be spent in maintaining the residence. The building you live in will be owned by a proverbial “fraternity corporation,” rather than by any individual person, and so will need more work to keep it liveable, and will still appear generally shabbiery, than a comparable private home. The reason for this is simple: you take care of your own stuff better than you take care of anybody else’s, and stuff that belongs to everybody is taken care of by nobody.

The fraternity experience is not for everyone, but a surprisingly large number of students (around 40%) choose that route. It is not a choice that is easily changed, either.

Off-campus, or “Taking your chances”

Off-campus housing is definitely the best choice for the RPI student. With off-campus housing, the choice of where to live is made by the student, not by housing or the “brothers in the house.” With off-campus housing, the responsibility of where and how to live rests only with the student, whether it be monthly, or by a lease. The reality of off-campus housing is that most people are going to move into living arrangements of their own devising after they graduate, and the experience of doing it on your own can be very helpful in keeping the “post-college blues” from affecting you too much.

The Organic Waste Products Services

The RPI Food Services are the butt of almost half the jokes you might hear while walking around campus at any time. Of course, almost any college food service is going to be some kind of cross between Burger Master and Wyatt’s Cafeteria, and DAKA is no different.

Not Parking at RPI

Parking is a four letter word on this campus, just ask any automobile owner you see trudging around campus in search of his car. In its rampant growth over the last ten years, Rensselaer has built over many of its parking lots, and increased its parking population as well by hiring more faculty and staff, and admitting more students. Security seems to be overly concerned with the problems of automobile parking at RPI as well, they administer around 2500 tickets each semester (that’s about 27 a day). What’s really the sad part about parking at RPI is this: it’s only going to get worse.

The Rensselaer Department of Transportation (RDOT) is responsible for the rules of parking (and other aspects of motor vehicle use on campus). In an attempt to provide more parking for faculty, RDOT has adopted a “points” system for faculty and staff parking permits, which give points for salary levels and seniority, the net result being that the guy with the most points parks closest to his office. This has one major effect on student parking: there is none directly on campus.

Strictly speaking, there are only two student parking lots to be found. The largest is North Lot, which is also shared by the faculty and staff who didn’t get slots in the “inner core” lots. The other lot(s) are located around the student dorms, with the highest concentration of spaces found around the freshman dorms. The Armory lot was open to students, but with the closing of the Communications Center Upper Lot, for the construction of the CII, RDOT decided to cut this off from students. Of course, any student can park in any open spot along Sage Avenue or 15th Street, but these spots are in general hard to find during the day, and are often snowed under when the snow plow passes them.

To add to the aggravation, RDOT requires students to register their cars with Security, and pay a $10 fee (tax) to park on the legal student lots. The only reason they require this is to be able to trace a particular car to a particular student, in order that the inevitable parking ticket can be charged to the student’s account with the Bursar. The fee for a parking infraction, (e.g. parking without a sticker, parking in a faculty spot) is $10, if you pay in cash at Security. If you let the ticket sit, at the end of the semester RDOT takes $15 out of your breakage fee (tax) for each ticket. Tickets can be appealed by students through a board that is chaired by students, however, fewer than ten percent of all tickets are revoked.

The Art of Doing Laundry

There are basically three ways to do your laundry at RPI. If you live off-campus, you can use one of the commercial laundromats. If you live in a dorm, then you also have the option of using the dorm facilities. And, if where you live has its own machines, then you can do it at home. A much less often used option is to take your laundry home (to your real home, that is) when you visit there every month or so. Few people at RPI live close enough to the Tute to make this a viable alternative. It is very much easier than doing your laundry yourself, though.

Of the three, doing your wash at home is the best idea, for you don’t have to cart your clothes across campus or town, exposing them to the elements and prying eyes, and endangering them to strange machines and theft. Also, the cost of doing the wash is undoubtedly less when done at home. However, very few apartments off-campus have these facilities, so most students are left with one of the first two options. Many fraternities will either have laundry rooms or some form of laundry service; this may tend to make fraternities a bit more popular than off-campus housing.

Going to a commercial laundromat is your next best bet, whether you live on campus or not. if you have a car, then several places are available to you, the best being A-1 Wash, on 15th Street, beside the Copper Mug and Arrow Cash Market. They charge 85 cents for a wash and 25 cents for each 12 minutes in a large dryer. A typical load will cost $1.35 to wash. They also have a drop off service, for a little more, where one of their employees will wash your clothes for you, and have them ready by the evening. The advantages of these places are only obvious when compared with on-campus facilities.

As for on-campus washing, Not the Handbook can only offer you some advice and our best wishes. The biggest problem with on-campus laundry facilities is that they are poorly maintained. When machines break, it usually takes weeks for the Office of Housing to fix them. This is partially due to the paperwork, and partially because few students report problems quickly, because no way to report problems has been made available to them. Although both the campus and the professional machines take 20 minutes for a load, the professional machines generally can do more laundry with less detergent. If these aren’t enough aggravation, the driers don’t. Most of the time they are filled with lint, and the heating elements are near failure. However, by far the most aggravating thing about on-campus washing is that when a machine eats one of the silly plastic tickets they use for money, you have to go to the Housing Office to get a refund, amid lots of paperwork. If you are out of tickets, “you go hungry” as the saying goes.