Due to the current coronavirus pandemic, most students on campus have been asked to return home for the remainder of the semester with the exception of international students and students with special circumstances.
The Campus Housing and Community Living office is reassigning rooms to students staying on campus. All students are slowly being reassigned to rooms in Macomb Hall and Whiteface Hall. Each student is also given a private room and allocated a private bathroom to encourage social distancing and prevent the spread of the virus.
Akrashti Sharma, an international student from India majoring in economics, was asked to move from Moffitt Hall to Whiteface Hall.
“It was an extremely stressful situation as it was quite difficult getting in touch with [Housing],” Sharma said.
Sharma was sent an email during spring break, informing her she would have 48 hours to move once she received her new room assignment.
However, she wasn’t assigned her new room until two weeks later.
“It felt like I was sort of stranded,” she said. “I wasn’t sure when to start packing and if I needed to place any items in the trunk room or not.”
Sharma also mentioned that six other students were living on her floor.
“It can get very noisy, especially in the middle of the night,” she said. “However, there is no community advocate on my floor, so there is no one I can report my concerns to.”
Sharma and her former suitemate, Pilar Balader, had requested to be assigned rooms on the same floor as they shared a lot of dormitory items, like their fridge and TV, but their request was not considered, and they were assigned rooms on different floors.
“I am from Spain and have been trying to go home for a while now,” Balder said. “It is extremely lonely on campus, and I would like to be with my family right now.”
Her flight back home was canceled, as Spain — which currently ranks second in confirmed cases across the world — is also being hit extremely hard by the coronavirus pandemic.
Sharma and Balader said a very limited number of moving carts were available for students to pick up at the Housing office. About three people had to share one cart for two trips, making the moving process last a lot longer.
Meron Yohannes, an international student from Ethiopia currently living in Harrington Hall, is awaiting her new room assignment and said the whole moving process has left her feeling very unsettled.
“I have been packed for weeks now and still haven’t received a new assignment,” she said.
Yohannes said while she understood these are uncertain times, she still wishes Housing had planned the moving process a little differently.
“I have two storage boxes, but I am not even sure where to place them yet,” Yohannes said. “It will all depend on if the new building that I am assigned to has a trunk room or not,”
Email Alaina Asim at cp@cardinalpointsonline.com
