By: TreDarius Hayes
When people think about living in a community style building in college, they cringe at the idea. They can’t imagine living in a building where they have to share a bathroom with the entire floor. They judge it before they even give it a chance. Well, after living in all types of student housing, community style is definitely my favorite one.
Each type of student housing serves a specific purpose, and a specific population. However, if you are new to the university and want to make friends were you live, living in a community style building make be the best fit. It’s inevitable that you will be close to more than half of your floor, even if you try just a little. That’s an experience you can’t get everywhere.
So what makes living in a community style building so great? Well for one, you share a bathroom with your floor or your wing. Each community building either splits its floors, sides, or wings by gender for the sake of having single gender restrooms for health and safety. So you would only share the restroom with others like you, who may have the same shaving and showering habits as you. That eliminates messiness and long waiting times. And having separate gender restrooms is a great way to make sure everyone is comfortable.
Making friends is a little bit easier when all you have to do is speak to someone on your morning commute to brush your teeth. It doesn’t take much effort to get involved on your floor in a community style building. Just having the restroom down the hall opens a window of opportunity. Everyone has to use the restroom at some point in the day. That increases the likelihood of seeing people on the floor. This visibility allows for residents to have conversation. Community in a community style building develops itself.
Community style buildings offer community spaces on the floors equipped with a kitchen, television lounge, and study areas. It’s rare to find these spaces unoccupied, especially at night when everyone wants to catch up and get some homework done in company. For someone who isn’t fitting in or not getting to know others on the floor, I would recommend they visit the kitchen a few nights a week to make new friends.
Having lived in other style buildings before, I could not experience all of the things that a community style building offers. While living in other buildings was great and I cherish those memories, I wish that I had applied to live in a community style building earlier. It’s not something you can explain easily to someone who doesn’t know what it’s like to live there. Once you do, you’ll understand why many people chose to come back and stay in a community style building beyond freshman year. If you’re like me and love to meet new people and become close with them, you may want to look into staying in a community style building.
Tre D Hayes is a Senior majoring in Journalism and Electronic Media. In his free time, Tre makes all sorts of design materials, some to be used for work and some for fun like t-shirt designs.
“What I like best about living on campus is how affordable it is to live so close to class and your friends.”