Students look off-campus for summer housing

When Molly Gibson ’14 heard that East Asian Studies lecturer Tomoko Shibata was looking for someone to watch her cat and dog for the summer in exchange for living free at her home in Princeton, the deal was too good for Gibson to pass up.

Walking, feeding and caring for the pets will cover her housing while she stays on campus this summer while working as the business manager at WPRB.

Gibson said she is glad she does not have to pay for on-campus accommodations.

“It is expensive to live on campus,” Gibson said. “It would cost me most of what I’d be making at my job.”

Living on campus between June 11 and Aug. 13 will cost students $1,737, according to the Housing and Real Estate Services website. Rooms in Cuyler, Patton, Wright, 1903 and the first floor of Bloomberg will be used to house approximately 400 students.

Despite the costs, Manager of Undergraduate Housing Angela Hodgeman said that everyone who requested summer housing received it and that there is no wait list. Students spending the summer working on campus, performing research or doing independent work are eligible for on-campus summer housing. Non-Princeton students are also able to live on campus during the summer if they are working for the University for at least 35 hours a week. However, students who are just interning in the area are not allowed to live on-campus.

Like Gibson, Charlie Kelly ’14 also said the cost of on-campus housing led him to seek other options for summer accommodations. Instead, Kelly will sublet an apartment at the Butler Apartments with a friend for the summer while he stays on campus to do research with the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department. This arrangement will cost “significantly less” than choosing to live on campus.

Kelly also said that his friends who had lived on campus during previous summers advised him to seek other options.

The University offers students living on-campus summer meal plans, which gives students 40 meals during the summer for $580. This means that each meal costs $14.50. Dining Services also offers students the option of eating at their summer barbeques each Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evening at the Graduate College. Students are able to purchase 10, 15 or 20 meals in blocks for these BBQs for prices ranging from $80 to $140. They can also pay $8.75 for an individual meal.

Kelly said that he thought the cost of living on-campus was too high compared to the amenities that the University supplies the students.

Specifically, most of the rooms offered for summer housing do not have air conditioning. Only students with rooms in Bloomberg will have air conditioning.

Emily Trask-Young ’13 lived in a room that was not air conditioned in Henry the summer after her freshman year. She said she liked her roommates and the large size of the room but would return home on weekends because of the heat. She suffers from asthma and said that living in such extreme heat is not a safe option for her.

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“It's not a problem in the school year, but in 98 degree weather and high humidity, even after 15 surgeries, it’s hard to breathe,” she explained.

The average high in Princeton during July is 86 degrees and frequently reaches into the upper 90s or low 100s.

Despite the heat, Trask-Young said she will be living on-campus again this summer. She noted she is looking forward to taking advantage of living in Princeton without the stress of classes.

“Being here in the summer is great in a lot of ways because it’s easy to miss out on some great off-campus stuff when classes and on-campus life overwhelm life from September through May,” she said.