A pre–frosh recently asked me what my least favorite part of Penn is. My immediate answer was housing. Everything about housing at Penn is ruthless and the process induces frustration and anxiety. At a school where everything we do is highly competitive, planning where you are going to live is that one thing that should be stress–free.
When you come to Penn as a freshman, it feels like you are forced to decide on your housing for the entirety of your sophomore year less than a month after you arrive on campus. You need to decide if your NSO best friends are the people you will want to live with for the following year. You have to choose between living off campus, in an apartment like the Radian, in a high rise or in your potential greek community—before you even know if you will be joining a house. Everything about housing is thrust upon you right at the beginning of the year, and it’s a lot to figure out.
At many other schools, students stay on campus for the majority of their college careers. Penn is unique because it has so many other options available in place of traditional dorms. As college students, we have the opportunity to “play house” with our best friends and get our first taste of the responsibilities and realities that come with living under a landlord. Without parents or RA’s telling us what to do, we can live on our own and learn how to fend for ourselves—or at least try to.
Off–campus housing is a great opportunity to take advantage of at Penn, but the timeline and atmosphere under which the related decisions take place is problematic. Finding an available house is hard enough, and it’s nearly impossible to figure out what you’ll want a year away from your decision. Leases need to be signed by mid–October, which puts housing on everyone’s mind at the start of the school year. The rush to sign a lease and lock down a location creates a pressure that fuels selfishness. If you’re not watching your back, you’ll get screwed over by everyone else who is. Everyone is in a rush to decide as well, and they don’t always stop to think about whom they might be excluding and how their decisions may affect others.
The process sucks. I had a crappy experience with housing my sophomore year, and it singlehandedly contributed to my unhappiness that first semester. But, later that year, I came to the realization that a lot of these decisions aren’t made with the intention to hurt. Rather, they’re made because of the situational constraints on the housing process here. Maybe your living situation won't be ideal, but it also shouldn’t make or break your time at Penn. It’s all sort of downhill after the Quad, anyways.
