Residence Halls

Residence Halls by Kelley McCormick made some valid points but I can’t say I agree with everything she said. I don’t recall seeing this brochure over the summer but I feel like she did a good job of describing the basics of what was on it. I definitely agree with things like the dorms having good security, the beds probably won’t be matching, you can’t truly personalize your room, and that there were a lot of things that were relative in the brochure. At the same time I think she whined about small things and I don’t have too much sympathy for her in the food aspect.

Starting with things I agreed with the thing that stuck out to me the most was her describing the police situation at Miami. There are a ridiculous amount of police at Miami, I see them almost every night walking back to my dorm on the weekends and they are all over Uptown. According to the brochure there is good security for the dorms so I would have to agree with her when she says this is one of the few true things on the brochure. I also agree when she says that the brochure saying things like “you can have completely personalized rooms and matching beds” just aren’t true. There are severe limitations for personalizing your room; they gave us a bunch of rules when we first arrived of what we can’t use to hang posters and other rules like this. The matching beds part just really doesn’t matter to me because as a guy I really could care less if my roommates bed matched mine but if for some reason I did want them to match living in a dorm wouldn’t help make that happen. I would also think that some of the things she mentioned in the brochure were completely relative. For example living close to classes, I got extremely lucky and all my classes are very close but I have friends that have long walks to class. Saying you will be close to all your classes is just not true for the most part. You might be better off commuting and being able to drive to your classes.

Although I did agree with most of what she said there were small things that I couldn’t help but notice she seemed to be making a big deal about. For example she complains about not being able to study while her roommate is on the phone or sleep while her roommate is watching a show. The studying part is easy to resolve, go down to the study room that all the dorms have in the basement. As for her roommate watching a show she could easily just ask her to turn it down and if there is an issue maybe she needs to request a new roommate. Then she brings up the food, I personally have no problem with the food by my dorm. I can find something good to eat there every day. I’m not a vegetarian and don’t understand the reasoning behind it at all (except for maybe religious reasons) but no one is forcing you to not eat meat and there are plenty of options at my dining hall that contain no meat even though meat to me is usually the main part of the meal.

As you can see I have mixed emotions about Kelley’s opinions on Residence Halls. Some of her points on the brochure were good ones and I can easily agree with them. Others just seemed to be personal problems like maybe being a little picky with the food. It is definitely obvious though that the brochure was trying to glorify residence halls.