Move-in day – a stressful day filled with hours spent out in the sun, waiting in line for elevators, heaving furniture up stairs and unpacking endless boxes full of items you probably don’t actually need.
You may have met your roommate for the first time or perhaps this time you greeted your best friend and roommate for the past three years.
Housing is a crucial part of the Auburn experience and it can make or break your year.
There are many pros and cons to living on and off campus. You could have a stubborn roommate, an unexpected best friend, an inconvenient location or a room five minutes from your class.
According to Auburn Housing Services, Auburn’s residence halls house 4,800 students. This accounts for only about 17 percent of all Auburn students, which leaves the vast majority in apartments and houses across the city.
Brice Messerly, a junior in finance, has lived in an apartment for the past year after spending his first year on campus. Messerly said he prefers the many amenities apartments bring, such as closer parking, a kitchen, a personal washer and dryer and the freedom that comes from living without resident assistants and Auburn Housing employees.
Anna Vail Chancey, a senior in rehab services, resonates with Messerly’s new found freedom.
“I like feeling like an adult without actually being an adult,” Chancey said. “I have way more space which means more clothes to buy to fit in that big new closet! I also have my own bathroom and an actual kitchen, though I’m still eating ramen because college.”
While Chancey enjoys living off campus more than her days in the dorms, she said she had many positive memories in her residences in the Quad and the Village.
“I miss living five feet from my best friend,” Chancey said. “Some may consider this a con, but I loved my freshman year roommate.”
Not everyone is as lucky.
“I didn’t like my freshman year roommates,” Messerly said. “I lived in the Village, so I was lucky in that respect, but I found it hard to enjoy living in a suite with people I wasn’t friends with. Being able to pick my roommate in my apartment was so much better.”
Messerly and Chancey were able to list many similar pros to living on campus. They enjoyed the proximity to friends, location of the dorms and the ease of calling maintenance.
Both listed difficult landlords and high grocery bills as a con to living off campus. They both lived in the Village and they appreciated the proximity of Village Dining and all of its TigerCard-friendly options.
Chancey lived in the Village sorority dorm her sophomore year, which is a very different experience than the typical freshman dorm. Each sorority has their own hall to house 40 of their active members.
The suite-style dorms allow for privacy for the older members while still promoting sisterhood through living in close proximity to one another. The same can be said for the house that Chancey currently resides in.
There are many houses in Auburn like Chancey's that house all women from the same sorority. Due to the lack of sorority houses on campus, many sororities have houses passed down to their members either through coincidence or to keep the house available to smaller get-togethers through the sorority and to promote sisterhood.
Whether it be sisterhood, landlords, location or roommates, both on and off campus housing have their pros and cons. College housing is never going to be perfect, but Auburn students can always find a way to make themselves at home in the loveliest village on the plains.
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