Essay 2 Revised

Jodie Crutchley
English Writing Skills Workshop
Professor Rasheda Young
10/06/2014

                            

                                   Home Not Quite Homey 

Where is home? Is it where you live now? Where you grew up? Home can be wherever you want it to be. Your home can be in the woods where you can smell the fresh sap resinating from the trees, in a suburb with your family, and friends, or even on a field where you play your favorite sport. Home is where you make it. I highly doubt anyone has a perfect home. Valerie Kinloch lists the problems in her home of Harlem, which has been changing in her eyes for the worse, in her essay “Harlem is art, Harlem as art”. She describes the migration of the native people of Harlem. Not because they want to leave but because its becoming difficult to live there. Which Kinloch feels is setting fire to the culture Harlem once had. There is always something that could be fixed or changed where you live, or play. Personally in my home which is my dorm room, 3051 Hamilton Twombly on the campus of Fairleigh Dickinson University, the bathrooms do not have enough stalls, the laundry rooms do not have enough machines, and the building has creepy critters making there way in. I would like to have changes in the structure of the building due to lack of stalls in the bathroom as well as showers, lack of washers and dryers, and also the screens on the windows in the rooms themselves. 
In the Hamilton building there are four floors with dorms on them. In the basement there is the freshman lounge which connects Hamilton to Florence, which is the other freshman dorm. I live on the 3rd floor of Hamilton. We have one bathroom in the girls hallway and we have the only washer and dryer on the floor in our hallways as well. (Which means the boys from the third floor always have to use our washer and dryer). In the bathroom there are two stalls, one of which has been locked for god-knows-what. Last week someone had broken the toilet seat of one of the stalls also. Which means thirty or so girls have been sharing one stall recently. There are four showers that I doubt are cleaned regularly because there is always globs of hair as big as golf balls sitting next to the drains. Other than the bathrooms the screens on the windows have holes in them so they don’t stop bugs from coming in and we regularly have stink bugs crawling around acting like they own the place. I still call my Hamilton 3051 my home despite the inconveniences the building has. There are just a few things I would like to change. 
On the third floor of Hamilton the ladies room does not have enough stalls for using the toilet and showering. As I mentioned before there are only two stalls to use the bathroom in and one of those two has been locked for the past three days, and before that someone had broken off the toilet seat of one of them, so for three weeks now we’ve been sharing one stall. This to me is highly unsanitary, and is also very inconvenient. If I am in dire need to use the toilet I am forced to walk down four flights of stairs to get to the basement. Then walk up the four flights just to get back to my room. I would like for the bathroom to be larger with more toilets since there is about thirty girls and  stall on this third floor of Hamilton. 
In order to fix the toilet shortage on my floor the school would have to change the structure of the building which poses a large obstacle so instead I’m going to pose a different solution. If the floors were gender specified and the bathrooms on the floor were both for the one gender it would make it easier for the students. Sharing two bathrooms is much easier than sharing one. If the toilet brakes on one side there is the option to use the other halls bathroom instead of walking to the basement. Making a floor gender specific and having two women’s (or men’s) bathrooms on one floor could solve the shortage of stalls in one bathroom problem but there is also the problem of not having enough washers and dryers.
For the third floor there is only one washer and dryer, for sixty or so students. Since the laundry rooms are always open people from other floors also come to use ours when it’s open and theirs is occupied. This is a problem because either there is no open washer or dryer, or people are taking others belongings out to put their belongings in. I have had a problem with others taking my clothes out of the dryer before they are even finished drying, and I have also had a problem with people giving me no time at all to take my belongings out of the wash, after they have finished, and taking my wet clothes out and putting them on the top of the washer. This causes altercations with others on my floor. I have found that others have shared my problem because the RA has posted a note asking people to be patient and wait for the person before laundries dry. Which has not stopped anyone so far. After I wash my cloths I have to wait for the dryer to finish to put my wet clothes that have been sitting on top of the washer for a while in. It’s posted to give others time to take their belongings out of laundry machines but since there is only one of each machine waiting isn’t an option or you’ll never get your laundry in. So I believe the school should purchase more laundry machines for the floor. 
If there were more laundry machines it would be easier to get laundry done, and also people would be less likely to take things out in order to do their own. People wouldn’t feel pressured to do their laundry as soon as possible which would pressure them to take other people belongings out of the machine as soon as they finish not giving others time to finish theirs or taking other peoples clothing out before it’s even finished. Giving the floors machines would make it so people from other floors are not crowding other laundry rooms because they cannot use their own. For example people from the fourth floor won’t have to do their laundry on the third floor if they had more machines to do their laundry. This would mean less people fighting over limited machines, so less altercations. Fixing this problem leaves only the problem of the faulty windows.
The screens on the windows either have holes in them or aren’t on all the way letting bugs into them. Twelve times already I have had to flush a stink bug down the toilet or kill and clean up a bunch of ants that I’ve watched scurry straight past the window. This bothers me a lot because I now get the feeling that while I sleep bugs are curling up next to me, and slowly creeping over me. It disgusts me and makes me not want to sleep in my room. I believe the school should have facilities put little ant traps out and also fix the windows screens to minimize bugs.      
Bugs aren’t able to enter a window screen that does not have holes as easily as apposed to one with holes. The amount of bugs in the dorms will most likely decrease if the school fixes the window screens. Since ants are so small I would like if the school placed small ant traps around the hallway, in the bathroom, and also gave them to the residences of the dorm rooms to place around their rooms if they wish. This should help decrease the number of ants in the buildings, and let me get a better nights sleep then I have been getting due to these creepy crawlers. My solutions could potentially improve the living conditions in the Hamilton Twombly building drastically. 
If the problems on the third floor of Hamilton are not fixed the residence will suffer and the college will lose potential students. The problems I have mentioned should be fixed to help the students! It is hard to focus on your studies when you are constantly fighting over a shower, stall, or laundry machine. The purpose of going to college is to prepare, and give you the skills you need to live on your own. Fairleigh Dickinson University is not measured in its amount of students but how successful their students are. If the problems I stated are not fixed I feel that the school will continue to make it harder for students to succeed, and keeping them focused on why they are in college. Also as a college athlete I am involved in the recruiting process of perspective athletes. One of my duties as a freshman athlete, on the field hockey team is, is to host recruits. I find it very unappealing to prospective students to see bugs in the dorms as well as the small bathrooms on my floor. Sure you could say it’s one person out of thousands on prospective students. Yet this one person may influence twenty others around her to not come to FDU based on the dorms, then those twenty people tell another twenty people about what they have heard about FDU. Fixing things for the students helps FDU in many different ways like: keeping the students in a successful mindset, and also helping FDU gain interest by prospective students.   
Keeping people at FDU is similar to the way Valerie Kinloch wrote about keeping the people of Harlem in Harlem, in her essay “Harlem is art, Harlem as art”. In Kinloch’s essay she describes how the changes to Harlem are making it more expensive and forcing the people native to Harlem to move elsewhere. The changes went from new stores to wealthier people who in turn raised property taxes in Harlem. I believe this connects with the problems at FDU because the negatives of dorm life can suade the people living here at FDU to transfer elsewhere. The tuition here is $37,260, which does not include the $1,119 per continuing undergraduate credits, or the cost of room and board which adds another $8,000. The school also requires freshmen to pay for a $4,000 meal plan. If you add all of these together plus extra fees for technology. It comes out to about $53,000 a year. If the administration wants us to stay and pay this extremely high tuition, then use some on the money we give you to live here and fix our new home, or like the people of Harlem in Kinlochs essay, we will pack our bags and find a new home. 

I hope to see changes in the bathroom situation, the laundry rooms, and the windows/insect control in Hamilton.  Just as Valerie hopes her essay will be a “call to action” for the people of Harlem. College is expensive, and FDU is not our only option as students. I believe the changes could make the college experience a little better for people who are to  pressured by a clock to wait around for an open stall, shower, or laundry machine. It could also help a entomophobic (or inspectaphobic) such as myself get some sleep knowing there aren’t dozens of scary looking critters making themselves at home under my pillow at night. This school is our home now and is the potential home for thousands of other people. Fix it now for the benefit of the students and in turn the benefit of the University.