Close Quarters Essay, Research Paper

Subject: Three students living in one dorm proves to raise many problems.

Recently, students at Millersville University have been forced to live in three person rooms. The dorm room is around eleven feet wide and fourteen feet long. Not only is their privacy very limited, it also poses many other problems. Their own closets are shared with other people, showers are hard to come by, and finding a washing machine starts to compare to finding a golden nugget. Having these students live in three people rooms raises many problems.

Here in Millersville, these children never have any privacy or room. Two roommates always seem to be in the room. Even if one has left, the other always tends to be there. People from other schools have dropped out because of their lack of privacy. These children only had one other roommate. Even so, they could not handle living there without her privacy. There are plenty of people like this out there, imagine if they had to experience living with two other students. These people will drop out of Millersville s curriculum very soon. Not only do they have no privacy, two people are forced to share the closets at school. Men and women alike complain about having no room for their clothes.

Coming out of the room, showers, washing machines, and dryers are hard to come by when there are so many tripled dorms in a building trying to use them. Not only are there a lot of people that are trying to get showers, not all of the showers are in tip-top shape. There are five showers for around forty people per hall. Some of these showers have no water pressure, some only spray cold water, and some are always clogged so the student is standing in a puddle of their own filth. The showers that everyone uses will soon have problems with them due to the constant use they are in. The washing machines and dryers in the dormitories are in constant use. Washing and drying student s clothes becomes an all day project. All day they are constantly running up and down the stairs to see if there is an open machine to put their clothes into. Like the showers, not all of the machines work.

These things make students less happy, pleasing the students should be the universities first priority. Without a student body there is no school, hence all the people getting paid are out of jobs. There should not be one single solitary thing put in front of a student s happiness with his or her accommodations. The school would not like new alumni to leave the school telling other future students how much they did not like Millersville. Ernest Pascarella says, What happens is the person who lives on campus, they’re just more involved in the institution. (Lawton 1) With this new dormitory, alumni will recruit new students for the university. Building another dormitory will pay itself off in the end by the student s happiness.

One way to make the students happy would be to give them their space and privacy. With more privacy students will get more sleep. People have a hard time getting to sleep when other people in the same room are talking. With better sleep comes the student s better ability to learn. No students will fall asleep in class if they are getting enough of it in their dorms. Children attending college also need their space. Without space people start to feel trapped. This feeling would also hinder the student s ability to learn. With clear heads every morning students will be more attentive in their classes. If there was only two students per room children will also be less distracted when doing homework. Fewer distractions will allow students to concentrate on homework so they can earn better grades. By building a dorm, the students will gain their privacy and space so that they can earn better grades in their classes.

Another good way to make the students happy is to give the students better access to showers, washing machines, and dryers. These facilities are shared by all of the students in their dorm or hallway. Because of the tripling in many of the dorms now, the facilities are constantly in use and breaking faster. The people in charge of fixing these problems have other important issues to attend at this point in time also caused by the tripling. After building another dorm these people will have more time to fix appliances that keep breaking. Each dorm would also have less people, causing the times of use these appliances are being used to drop significantly. Students will have better hygiene if they can use the showers and washing machines whenever they want. Students will also be much happier not having to worry if the showers are all taken. After another dorm is built, the students will be happier and have better hygiene.

Instead of building another dorm, another way to make the students happy by getting them out of tripled rooms is to let fewer students in per year. Letting a fewer amount of students in per year will put restrictions on how large the student body will become. If the school allows fewer students, that few extra dollars they are making from the students now will not exist. This means whatever was being gained by this new salary cap will have to end. The school will have to take away certain privileges they had with the extra money. This might get some of the staff upset. If the dorm being built is large enough, the school can allow a few extra students into the school s curriculum. Not too many, just enough so the school will not have to hire new professors for classes. This will give the school s salary cap a little higher. Accepting fewer students per year will lower the school s income, building a new dorm will raise the income. If the school cares about their yearly income, building a new dorm is the only logical step to take

Since building another dorm is the only option, where should it be built? There is one spot that sticks out like a sore thumb. Behind Lenhart hall there are huge dirt piles sitting there. If we remove a small portion of the trees there, we could add a small parking lot with a dorm. If the school was smart they would have made all of the dorms ten stories tall to fit more students. This dorm will take the least amount of ground area while standing as tall as possible. Behind Lenhart hall is the best place to build this new dorm.

There are so many problems caused by the over crowding being done in all of the dormitories here at Millersville. No privacy, space, showering, and clothes washing are many things students have to worry about at school. The university needs to build another dormitory; there is no other choice. First, it will give the school an opportunity to start fixing all of the small problems that are plaguing all of the dorms. Second, it will satisfy all students, gaining the recruiting ability of the new alumni. Third, the dorm will eventually make the school more money from more tuition. Finally, making another dorm will stop the domino effect of problems that seem to occur when you group three students together in a small room. The university must build another dormitory as soon as possible before the students start getting angry.

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