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Suite Life 101

Today’s dorms offer more room, personal space

By Mike McGinley mmcginley@timesleader.com
Features Writer

Walk-in closets with enough space to hold a desk and clothes, lounges with flat-screen, wall-mounted televisions and 8-foot islands in fully equipped kitchens are just some of the perks of living on campus nowadays.

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Caitlin Day lives in newly renovated McGowan Hall at Misericordia University.

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Ken Faldetta, 19, and James Edelman, 20, are two frequent patrons at Leo on the Mane, a restaurant in Gateway Corners, a new complex at King’s College used for student housing, classrooms and dining.

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“This is more space than I have in my own bedroom,” Danielle Cino said, motioning to the huge closet that stores clothing, school supplies and cleaning essentials inside the townhouse she shares with five other women at Misericordia University in Dallas Township.

“I don’t have one at home, so I wanted one here,” said the 22-year-old from Long Island, who lives in one of 18 townhouses that come with a living room, two bathrooms and full kitchens she and her roommates use to cook pasta and bake cookies.

“I’m in clinicals now, so it’s kind of like living on your own but not yet,” she said. “You’re somewhat separated from campus but still on campus.”

That’s often the goal of colleges and universities, which seek to keep students on campus and so are increasingly offering the general amenities of life in a modern household.

And then some.

A closet spacious enough to study inside? A.J. Nudo, assistant director of residence life at Misericordia, noted this is a more likely use in a guys’ room. (For obvious reasons, i.e., fewer clothes.)

“I think life would be a lot harder without the dishwasher,” said 20-year-old Candice Russ, a student at King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, who’s a bit spoiled by her lush living conditions this year.

Her home is in the brand-new Gateway Corners, which also houses a restaurant, day care and classrooms and is among the most highly coveted residences on campus.

“People from Alumni (Hall) always say ‘I hope I can get in (Gateway Corners) next year so I can get a dishwasher,’ ” she said with a laugh.

Remember the old days?

On-campus living has come a long way from the teeny-tiny rooms of the past, when bathroom time was at a premium and dishes were washed by hand.

“You can literally do everything in this building,” 21-year-old Katherine Clerici of King’s said. “You could actually sit here all day and never leave.”

“It’s the dishwashers; it’s the island; it’s the storage,” Laurie Ann Tomsho, director of residence life at King’s, said, explaining the things students appreciate at Gateway Corners. The building at North Main and North streets has many of the same amenities found at other local colleges: lounges (fully stocked with computers), laundry rooms, wireless Internet access, constant security, plenty of storage and bathrooms with separate, outside-the-door sinks.

Using a lottery system at King’s, students can pick up to four roommates and accumulate points based on class years. Seniors get three points, juniors two and sophomores one. The higher the point total, the higher the group’s placement in the lottery drawing, which took place in February at King’s.

Other schools have similar systems.

“This is probably the first pick when it comes to apartments,” 19-year-old Ken Faldetta of Ocean City, N.J., said while dining in Gateway Corners’ first-floor restaurant.

“This place fills up first.”

Gateway Corners is especially convenient for education majors who have many classes in the building.

“I can roll out of bed and go to class,” education major Michelle Ray, 21, said.

She likes teasing classmates who don’t live there: “When we’re in class, I’ll ask them ‘So, what’s it like out there?’ ” she said on a snowy day last week.

Residents of Gateway Corners, which houses 162 students, also can share an apartment but have their own bedroom.

Each unit has four or five bedrooms, and each bedroom has an air-conditioning unit, a plus for roommates who don’t agree on temperatures.

Even an icemaker

At Marywood University, two students per room share an air-conditioning unit in Loughran (pronounced Lok-ran) Hall, where students have private bathrooms and access to ice-makers.

That made 22-year-old Duane Elders feel like he was living the high life during his freshman and sophomore years.

“I think when we came in (freshman year) we were like ‘Gosh, this is like a hotel,’ ” he said.

That was before his junior year of living in Madonna Hall, where deluxe suites include a full-size living room, two bedrooms (one to the left and one to the right upon entry) and a tiled bathroom, all things that remind him of the apartment from the 1990s television show “Saved by the Bell: The College Years.”

“This, I think, is our prime real estate. Students are always trying to get into it,” Dean of Students Amy Paciej said.

Students have access to a fully equipped cherry-wood kitchen with ample seating and exquisite mountain views, as well as a theater, where it’s not uncommon to see students gathered watching sporting events and election returns or playing games on a Wii.

“Because of the renovations we’ve had a higher retention. More juniors and seniors want to stay on campus,” Sara Rothenberger, assistant director of housing and residence life, said.

Before the 2007 improvements, Madonna Hall was reminiscent of the 1960s and 1970s with drop ceilings and community bathrooms.

“To hear students talk, this is 1000 percent better,” Rothenberger said.

That sentiment is echoed at the University of Scranton’s Condron Hall, where renovations were unveiled in 2007.

“They call Condron ‘Hotel Condron’ because it’s kind of swanky,” 20-year-old elementary-education major Kelsea Novak said.

She’s referring to the first-floor lounge that has a piano, suite-style rooms with bigger bathrooms than any other dorms on campus, kitchens on every other floor with countertops made from shiny recycled materials and bathrooms that she and her roommate share only with another pair of girls.

“You don’t have to wait to get a shower or walk down the hall in your towel,” Novak’s roommate, 20-year-old Colleen Tyrrell, an English and theology major, said.

Novak and Tyrrell, both sophomores from New Jersey, live in what they call the “best” of the cluster of second-year residence halls on campus.

Three big reasons they cite: the bathroom is much larger; they have more than one kitchen per building; and flat-screen television sets are mounted in the multimedia rooms.

And there’s more.

“The other (walls) are cinder block,” Novak said of the traditional dorm rooms.

That makes it difficult to hang posters and other personality-revealers.

Novak and Tyrrell’s room displays posters of Audrey Hepburn, a New York City scene and a shot of the HBO “Entourage” cast.

While the two didn’t know the girls on the other side of their bathroom until they moved in this semester, it didn’t matter much. They get along fine.

Some do, however, get lucky enough to share a bathroom with people they already know.

Passages

At Misericordia, Caitlin Day and her roommate share a bathroom with two friends, and they consider it a connector between their separate rooms.

They spend many a night watching television shows such as “The Bachelor,” which, by the way, disappointed Day this season.

She was hoping bachelor Jake chose the “good girl” Tenley over the wilder Vienna.

“When we’re hanging out, we go to both rooms,” Day, 19, said, mentioning the tile flooring in the room’s entryway and the bathroom as her favorite features.

“It’s a lot nicer having your own bathroom, because you don’t have to wear flip flops,” she said.

The location isn’t too shabby, either.

Because it’s across from the Banks Student Life Center, residents don’t need to look far for food, the bookstore or a game of foosball.

“This is the hub,” Nudo, the assistant director of residence life, said.

The same is true down at the home of the Colonel: Wilkes University.

Take University Towers, which the college recently purchased. It’s directly across from University on Main, a home to many recreational activities.

Sophomore soccer players Sarah Shetler and Megan Clementson say it’s a prime spot to live, especially because of the air conditioning.

“It was terrible,” Shetler said of not having A.C. in her former on-campus residence.

The rooms in the former apartment complex have space for three students and include a full kitchen, living room, private bathroom and a balcony.

Shetler and Clementson live on the “penthouse” floor, though it’s actually just another floor above the 12th.

“It’s the penthouse, even though the rooms are the same,” Shetler, 20, said.

“I like this because there’s more people in it,” Clementson, 19, said, comparing her sophomore-year apartment with her freshman digs at Rifkin Hall.

The two take advantage of their spacious abode by inviting other soccer players over to order pizza from Domino’s.

Despite having a functioning stove, the two don’t tackle cooking much.

“We’re good at making eggs,” Clementson, of Frederick, Md., said laughing.

The two do make use of the common living area, which they decorate every holiday.

For Valentine’s Day, they put hearts along the windows, for Christmas they lighted the balcony, and the St. Patrick’s Day d�cor is still in the works.

“My mom always sends me some decorations,” Clementson said.