>From The New York Times. "BOSTON � Jaron Friedman, a senior at Boston University, has done his time in the traditional dormitory double: a 180-square-foot box with a stranger in the next bed � his video-game-addicted sophomore roommate was "probably one of the worst roommates anyone on this campus has ever had" � and a bathroom down the hall shared by 24 underclassmen.
Now, Mr. Friedman says, "I want my own bedroom, my own bathroom, my own space." Boston University, which is trying to keep students on campus, is eager to give Mr. Friedman what he wants. This year he is in the $81 million high-rise apartment the university opened two years ago overlooking the Charles River. The 817 juniors and seniors in residence, men and women, all have their own bedrooms, in four-bedroom apartments. Mr. Friedman does share a bathroom with one of his three suitemates, but he is hardly complaining. The 1,200-square-foot apartment has two bathrooms � and a kitchen and oversized dining/living room (with spectacular views of Boston and Cambridge). All this costs Mr. Friedman $8,680 a year (on top of the $27,042 tuition), about $1,400 more than student housing where he would share a bedroom and considerably less than a similar apartment off campus. Mr. Friedman says the privacy is worth every penny. The roommate, a source of vivid memories for generations of former students, is no longer the staple of campus life it once was. Students like Mr. Friedman, who grew up with their own bedrooms in the prosperous 1990's, are increasingly demanding � and willingly paying for � the same privacy they had at home. Colleges have always offered single rooms, and students have long moved off campus in search of greater privacy. But for the last decade, colleges across the country, in a high-priced competition for students who may be just as concerned with residential amenities as they are with the number of volumes in the library, have been responding by creating housing in which the single bedroom is the mainstay. College administrators say they feel compelled, in part, to create more singles to keep students, mainly upperclassmen, on campus, where they will be more engaged in college life. In addition, the revenue that would go to private landlords is attractive. The new buildings are called residence halls or even living/learning centers. (Do not call them dorms; to housing officials and builders, the term is as obsolete as the dorm mother or the telephone down the hall.) Students often live in suites, where they share living rooms and, sometimes, kitchens, but can retreat to their own bedrooms, with their own computers, television sets, DVD players and telephones. "It's a statement about the affluence of America," said William Rawn, a Boston architect who is building residence halls, many of them with single bedrooms, at Northeastern University here in Boston, Trinity College in Hartford, Amherst, Swarthmore and Grinnell College, in Iowa. "And part of that affluence is that we lose the ability to share." College administrators, already concerned about the effect of technology on community life, say they worry that the new emphasis on single bedrooms will give students one more reason to hole up alone in their rooms. Some colleges are resisting the trend. Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering, a new institution in Needham, Mass., opened its first student residence last summer with all double rooms. "There is concern among college officials nationwide that as colleges have moved to more and more single rooms that students are interacting with fewer and fewer people in the hall," said Sharon Herzberger, vice president of student life at Trinity College, which three years ago opened two new residence halls with all single bedrooms. "This is exacerbated by the fact that students can now watch DVD's on their computer screens. It used to be that people would congregate down the hall in the lounge and watch TV and make popcorn as a study break. Now you can do all that in your own room." " When I went to Aberdeen University in the 1970's every freshman got a private study-bedroom in a hall of residence. This was before the personal computer, but students had their own hifis and tvs. The university had started building these halls in the mid 60's. The idea of sharing a room at university would seem pretty odd at most British universities for the last 30 years. What next from the USA - indoor plumbing ? :) -- William T Goodall Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web : http://www.wtgab.demon.co.uk Blog : http://radio.weblogs.com/0111221/ Putting an infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of keyboards will _not_ result in the greatest work of all time. Just look at Windows. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
