Nearly three years ago, during spring break of my junior year in high school, I took a tour of Hopkins. Our tour guide gushed about everything the school had to offer - lacrosse, engineering, political science, lacrosse, the Writing Seminars and, yes, more lacrosse.
She seemed genuinely proud of her school, with its strong academic programs and, well, lacrosse. However, she had left one aspect of university life out of her talk - housing - and my mom wasn't about to leave Baltimore without making sure that her little boy would be housed safely for his four years away from the nest.
"Is housing guaranteed?" my mom asked politely.
"Well, no, not yet," our guide replied, as if reading from a script. "But housing is going to be guaranteed for the first two years, and we're almost done building Charles Commons!"
Ah, the messiah itself was coming: a dorm disguised as a hotel, equipped with a cafeteria, mini-gym, and even a Starbucks. Essentially, Charles Commons would serve as a city within a city, making braving the oh-so-dangerous streets of Charles Village that much more unnecessary. The Commons, our guide promised us, was the answer to all concerned parents' questions, providing us with the near-guaranteed housing that exists at many of our so-called "peer institutions."
But Hopkins, as I now know as an experienced sophomore, is not like its peer institutions. It is its own animal - as much a business as a university - and does what makes business sense. Three years ago, it appealed to me with promises of all-but-guaranteed housing but, as I found out in an e-mail on Feb. 21, leaves me on my own to find an apartment:
"Unfortunately, we are unable to invite you to attend?the upper-class room selection process ... Thank you again for your interest in University housing and best wishes."
Well, the wishes were thoughtful, but a worry-free place to live would've been slightly more preferable, especially given the assurances the University made me and other prospective students in the spring of 2005.
Of course, on-campus housing is not for everyone, and some students are more than happy to deal with landlords and maintenance workers who couldn't care less about their tenants. However, as the e-mail from housing pointed out, there were "...a larger number of students express[ing] interest than ... space available." Surprise! Maybe some of us actually would like to wait a few years before the fun of paying electric bills and rent.
Granted, Charles Commons, with its approximately 600 spaces, has alleviated the housing problems at Hopkins, but most of those spaces go to sophomores for whom, without it, housing couldn't be guaranteed even for students' second year. Maybe I should be grateful that I got to live on campus this year, even if it was in McCoy.
But, for some reason, I'm not content. The 80-100 spots that were open to my class do not even come close to meeting our needs.
If we really claim to be like our peers, why can't we actually act like them? What do Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth and Duke have in common? According to the College Board, at least 85 percent of their undergraduates live in campus housing. Considering the fact that some students will always want to live off-campus, this suggests that nearly anyone who wants campus housing at those schools can receive it.
So much for peer institutions. If U.S. News and World Report considered housing availability when comparing Hopkins to the aforementioned schools, maybe we'd see some progress.
In the meantime, however, all we can do is hope: hope that, at some point, Hopkins realizes that its responsibilities lie beyond providing us with working classrooms, a library and a national-championship-winning lacrosse team.
That hope, though, is probably na've. As the News-Letter reported last week, Hopkins was recently ranked fourth by the Council for Aid to Education (CAE) for its fundraising prowess, but the school still can't provide us with housing.
Columbia, Brown, Dartmouth and Duke - with their 85 percent housing rate - all raised less money according to CAE.
So in the end, the housing question is really one about priorities. Other reputable schools, like the aforementioned four, have demonstrated that it is possible to go beyond the bare minimum for housing, even without our fundraising expertise.
Five months ago, Hopkins finished completion of the $75-million Decker Quadrangle, containing a garage that can hold 604 cars, many more than the previous parking area behind Garland Hall held.
Whose needs are more important, cars' or students'? It's a simple but telling question. As I hunt for my off-campus apartment, I know that it's probably not the latter.
