On Sunday, Sept. 2, 2018, the University of Massachusetts Boston made history by having students live on campus for the first time ever. Now, did it go quickly and quietly? That part depends on where you were in the car line and what building you were moving into. When you do something for the first time, you can never expect it to work perfectly and the car line on the day of move-in proved this phenomenon right. I was only in line for about an hour, and I was one of the lucky ones. I talked to students who sat in their cars for up to three and a half hours just to park and unload their stuff. It got to the point that people were getting out of their cars before the drop-off point, unloading their items, and hauling it over to the dorms. This, however, was one of the smaller problems because you needed a bin to get your stuff into the building to begin with.
You would think that the small task of obtaining a bin would be easy, not being a thing people would fight over, but that is far from the reality. My aunt even stole a bin from someone who was holding five of them for a car that was further back, not even close to being parked, when we were parked. I have never seen someone give such a dirty, shocked look. Once you had your stuff all piled up and you were ready to go to your room is when the great divide happened.
UMass Boston built two dorms for their students: the East Residence Hall, which was larger and had a dining hall and the West Residence Hall, which was much smaller and locked all the time. Everyone wanted to be in the East Residence Hall because it seemed cooler as it had a lot of amenities in it. There were little conference rooms, the dining hall, a convenient store, and not to mention more people. That was until they saw the line to get into the dorms, which not only was out the door but quite literally wrapped around the building. I lucked out living in the West Residence Hall. Not only did I not have a line to check into my dorm and to grab my keys, someone took my stuff up to my room for me. The kids in the East Residence Hall, on the other hand, had to stand with their things and wait for the elevator. My move-in was very smooth and easy compared to most of the people in the East Residence Hall.
When UMass Boston moves students into the dorm next year, I would suggest making move-in on two or three different days, such as having the West Residence Hall on one day, half of the East Residence Hall on another day, and then the rest of the East Residence Hall. This would not only make everything smoother, but also much quicker and efficient. It was upsetting that the move-in took so long that we missed the floor dinner they had been planning to serve. Again, we have to remember that this is UMass Boston’s first year with dorms and I am sure next year will be much better because this school is all about self-improvement.