Why do we have a new dining hall but no new dorms?
Who isn’t happy with the new Frassati Cafe? I mean, seriously, the food is pretty good. I am not sure there is a single person who can complain about the feeling of community that has returned to campus now that it is possible for students to walk through the cafe and be able to talk to everyone they know on the way.
Well, maybe people can complain about not finding seats, but that means campus is coming back to life so this is a good thing. This is all to say that the new Frassati cafe is great! This article is in no way supposed to tear down the cafe!
However, a question that I think should be asked is, “Why did we spend money on this instead of on new housing for students?” Aside from last semester, you never heard people complaining about the state of the Capp Bar. It was a spot everyone loved.
What you did hear with great consistency were complaints about the dorms. When a freshman girl tells you they live in Madonna, there is a pretty much universal response of, “Oh! I am so sorry!”
My freshman year, everyone made jokes about the 12 plagues of Madonna. Wherever you are on campus, you will probably hear people complaining about something or other in their dorms.
The skunks living under Augustine were cute, but majorly inconvenient. Madonna seems to have a snake problem, as two years ago a snake came out of the drain, and just last semester one fell out of a girl’s ceiling…into her bed…while she was in it… Let’s not forget the myriad of crickets, cockroaches and spiders that invade every year.
The dorms seem to be doing their best to put all our freshmen, and some of our upperclassmen, through their paces. Besides the furry, slithery and creepy-crawly problems that infest the dorms, there are a ton of other issues.
Like the sinks in Augustine always having brown water, or the showers being either scalding hot or freezing cold for basically an entire month. Aside from plumbing issues, the mold is a health hazard that has caused many students to start using inhalers.
The student apartments and the freshman dorms are infested with black mold, which affects students’ health and ability to perform well academically. Some girls I know have actually moved off-campus because they couldn’t get rid of the mold in their campus living spaces.
These are serious issues. So why did we as a school spend so much money and effort on a new eating place that no student asked for?
We were all happy with the Capp Bar as it was, which is not to say that the new Frassati Cafe is bad; it was just unnecessary. Meanwhile, students are constantly begging for better living conditions, but none have been provided or even talked about.
Perhaps the money could have been better spent on completely removing the mold from the ceilings and installing better plumbing so that the dorms did not constantly have leak problems, which lead to more black mold. The money also could have been put to good use filling all the holes that allow so many bugs and other small animals to make their way into the buildings.
The new Frassati Cafe is designed like something from a fancy cafe in New York city, while the dorms are like a time portal to the Middle Ages. This problem needs to be addressed for the health and safety of the student body.
UD’s education is truly incredible, but how can the students give their all to the education they are paying for if their immune systems are constantly under attack by the conditions of the dorms?
Aine O’Brien is a junior English major.