Few conflicts on this Earth resemble the conflict that I’ve recently had with Stony Brook Housing. In my many conflicts in life, this has perhaps been one of the greatest. Fuck Toll Drive.
Let’s rewind to last April.
There I am, a Stony Brook junior, not in the market to socialize with people I don’t have to socialize with, happily enjoying my second year in a single room in the massive shithole of a residence hall called Stimson College. But then a light emerged. Toll Drive, in its modern and renovated glory, was given to me as an option. Eventually a group of three picked me up as their fourth, and my suite was made. My group became the first to claim a suite in Toll Drive, the Promised Land.
Then trouble struck. I was sent an e-mail over the summer saying that Toll Drive “might” not be done in time. Knowing how the administration of Stony Brook works, I knew this was the beginning of the end for me.
Sure enough, later in the summer, around August, I learned that Toll Drive would not be finished and that my housing situation was in a state of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
Several displaced groups told me they learned through the useless and outdated housing portal that they had been reassigned. I went on, genuinely fooling myself into thinking Stony Brook was done fisting me and I would be in a cushy West single with my future Toll suitemates. Little did I know, the fisting had just begun.
I was put in a double in Sanger College in Tabler Quad, the same suite my ex-girlfriend used to live in, just in case you thought Stony Brook couldn’t kick me in the dick any harder. My future suitemate Jordan, our esteemed and intimidatingly handsome culture editor, was in the same suite, but for some reason was not my temporary roommate.
After speaking to my temporary roommate, a big fan of smoking trees—a scent that would seep into my brain every night while I tried to sleep—I learned that he wanted to be roommates with the person who was Jordan’s temporary roommate. I e-mailed housing about this and got a response saying, “it’s our policy not to remedy a problem with another problem.”
And I think that’s where I finally lost my shit with Campus Residences. In their eyes, remedying the woes of four displaced and disgruntled roommates is “another problem.” When in reality the only party that gets “another problem” is Campus Residences, who have to do more work to make the four of us happy with our housing situation.
Fast forward to move-in day, which I naturally came to as late as I possibly could without missing class. I’m definitely not happy, but I’m thinking that I’ll be fine, as I hear a rumor that we’ll be placed in Toll by the second week of September.
Then the real nightmare began. As I walked up to my room (conveniently located on the third floor of Sanger Hall!), I noticed a seventh name on the suite door. I thought to myself, “ha! What unlucky bastard in the suite got tripled?” Sure enough I quickly became the unluckiest bastard in the world.
Although the housing portal told me that it was just myself +1 the night before, I was shocked to see a bunk bed in my already small room. In a fit of rage, I tore apart the top half of the bed frame, leaving it in the common room, as there was no way in hell that I would be spending time with a third human being in that room. After my rage ended, I wished my temporary suitemates a good day and went to housing to go bust some heads (metaphorically).
“Yeah, somebody made a mistake,” the secretary at the housing office told me. Apparently the reason Sanger thought there was a third person in my room is because the person who lived there before me dropped his housing, and Campus Residences “forgot” to remove his name from the Sanger roster.
And after that, my woes were alleviated, and I began to live my temporary life in Sanger. My room was 90 degrees at all times, and having a roommate was fine-ish, but I longed for the days that I would be out of this hellhole, closer to campus and luxury in Toll Drive.
And now, as I write this piece in my nice ass room in Toll Drive, I realize that my experience wasn’t really *that* bad. But as a whole, what I had to go through was unprofessional on the behalf of Campus Residences.
Promising students, specifically juniors and seniors in good academic standing, the most modern dorms on campus and then telling them, “Oops! We misjudged the time that it takes to build this place, and you guys are gonna be all over the place. Some of you may be in nice West apartments, while others are going to be sweating to death with a roommate,” is disrespectful to the students who plan to live in the new space.
Similarly, not keeping students actively updated on their temporary spaces until just a few days before the semester starts shows a lack of oversight on Campus Residences’ end.
At the risk of having the ending of my piece end like an 8th grade history paper, in conclusion, Toll Drive is pretty nice. So love Toll Drive, but fuck everything that I had to go through to get here.
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