NOT a WISH come true...

When I moved to DC, I thought things would be great. Living 2 blocks from the U.S. Capitol, within a 3 minute walk of a metro stop, and a great internship lined up. I thought, despite our housing (which is the subject of this post), that things would be great. I want to stress, DC isn't the problem here. The city is great, work is interesting (most days), and I am continuing to grow (though, not as much as I would like). I don't really have a game plan for next year, though ALL of you should know this by now, and I don't really know what to do going forward, but that is another issue for a later posting.

The problem right now is our housing. We are stating in D.C. Intern Housing. Washington Internship Student Housing. Sounds nice, right? IT'S NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! If you are ever looking for a place to stay in DC, don NOT stay here. I don't even know where to begin, but, let me try...

We pay rouughly $1500 a month, per person. For our location, it would be understandable if our place was nice, clean, rodent free, and large. It is none of those things, and there is where the problem begins. When I moved in to this place in January, I was shocked. I could not believe how bad it was. We have a room smaller than any room I have ever lived in by myself, but now I share it with 3 other guys. We have bunk beds (that fit none of us). We have an oven that has no insulation so it burns our cabinets. We have a love-seat for the 4 of us. There is closet space for perhaps 2 of us. There is no light leading down the steps to the basement where we live (and where any burgler could hide and rob us). The metal steps down into the darkness are rusted out, and feel like the whole in the middle of the main landing could give way at any time. I don't really know what to say. Mice, roaches, other creepy crawlers. And here's the kicker. As I mentioned earlier, we pay $1500 a month each. The place, according to similar housing in the area, should go for $1500 for ONE PERSON. We should, if the place was divided by 4, be paying $375 per person. The very worse part is that MSU isn't doing anything and doesn't seem to care about it.

The next problem. The housing people seem to be waging a war on us students because many on our program have called and complained. We can't do a damn thing about it, but they can make our lives miserable because we have no power. We all signed the contract (which was mandatory to live here). Our internet is not secured and slow as a result of neighbors poaching it, so we complained. One of the guys here plugged his XBOX into the modem (because you can play games online I guess), and we were busted. It's in violation of our contract. If we get caught again, they said they might kick us out. We aren't allowed to have alcohol, despite the fact that we are all 21. If we get caught, they could kick us out. We left a light on one time, they did a random inspection, and wrote us up with a violation. More violations could result in fines. For the same ridiculous price, we were supposed to be staying in a hotel (albeit in Virginia)! At least the hotel was nice (and w/ out mice).

According to fire code, allegedly, for our size room, we aren't supposed to have as many people in our room as we do. I don't know (halfway in) to our program what we can do, but something needs to happen. It's getting progressively worse. I don't think I really plan on going to law school anymore, but litigation at this point seems like something that should be pursued. And to be honest, I really hate all of those people that want to sue everyone for everything, but you have clearly not lived here. IT'S NECESSARY!!!!!!!!!!!! I think this is what they call the ghetto.

So, did we/are we getting screwed? Yes. Is there anything we can do about it? Probably not. Live and learn I guess. Just for comparison, my apartment in Rome, Italy, one of the most expensive, largest cities I have ever stay in, was on the 5th floor of a highrise, with large bedrooms, plenty of closet space, and 3 balconies... THREE BALCONIES!!!!!!!!

I really expected better from MSU on this program. It does not reflect well upon the University to put us, their students, in a situation like this.

Sparty has let me down.

Andy