I’m a freshman at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and I live in the dorms. So far, my experience has been pretty good. At first, the food was horrible, and I thank The Boston Globe for rescuing us from that one. But in all honesty, I respect the dorms because we are all new here; everyone is adjusting and learning about this living community every day. And that includes the directors. It can be frustrating to be guinea pigs, but we also do seriously have a great setup over here. I personally haven’t come across any huge problems but I still have my select opinion on the dorms.
It can be really frustrating to have your life disrupted by people figuring things out on their own accord. For example, I had a package come in on Friday. When I went to pick it up, there was no desk attendant there to help me. The security officer didn’t know if there would be one back for the rest of the night. I was let down when they told me that they couldn’t give me my package. But it was fine, I figured, since I’d go back the next day to see if they could help me then. Saturday comes, and by 6 p.m., there was finally a desk attendant working. Unfortunately, she had just started her shift and so none of the packages were logged in; it would take her hours to even get started. I understand that we may have budget cuts, so we won’t have workers as often, but it’s unfortunate that we don’t even get a clear understanding of the mailroom hours, and when we can expect to be able to pick up our items. It can be really frustrating to know that the things you bought have arrived and are sitting in a room that you could walk into and get yourself, but aren’t allowed to. This seems to be new, so I hope they change and fix this problem because we were given no warning about this. Take it from me—it can be really annoying when you’ve already placed and paid for your order.
Another thing that has frustrated me recently in the dorms is the fact that they don’t serve food at all whenever a break begins. After lunch on the Friday of Spring Break, they stopped serving food and did not start up again until the Monday morning that classes started. I can understand not serving food the week of the break, but I definitely feel that we should have had food available on both of those weekends. Plenty of people didn’t leave until after dinner time on Friday, and most people were present the Sunday before classes began. I think the reason this is so frustrating to me is that we pay a lot of money for food in the dorms—nearly $5,000 a year. And there isn’t even dinner provided on the night before classes begin again? I know this can easily be fixed, and I’m sure it eventually will (maybe even after this article is published!), but this happened for winter, and now spring break, and I don’t see any changes happening right now.
I love living in the dorms, and these problems aren’t the end of the world. However, these are still frustrating problems that I have encountered that should be addressed. With that being said, I still am going to miss the dorms and their convenience, as I have loved my experience here in the East Building of the Residence Halls.