Village housing

Village housing is both a blessing and a curse. Let's say you wanted to get off-campus housing, but couldn't either because you drew a bad lottery number, or because you were too young to even be in the lottery. Well, maybe you can live in village housing. The apartments can be kinda nice (although Firelands apartments are kinda sterile), and you get your own bathroom and stove/sink, so it beats the dorms — right? Well...almost. Village housing costs about $1,000 per year more than living in the dorms, and living in the dorms costs about $1,000 more per year than living in most of the apartments/houses for rent in town. So let's get this straight. The College is only a mediocre landlord, and you're paying $2,000 more than you would if you were renting from a human? Yup.

On the other hand, being in village housing lets you prepare and store your own food much more easily, and in recognition of this you can get on meal plans with even smaller numbers of meals than if you lived in the dorms — most folks view this as a plus.

Also — both years that I ever moved into village housing, the college hadn't cleaned out anyone's refrigerator, but had left them closed and off all summer, so most people's were full of mold. Thanks res-life, thanks for going the extra mile.