By Samantha Chase | Photo of Boxer Hotel in Boston from Creative Commons
When Suffolk announced they would be renting out Boston hotels as housing options for students returning to campus in fall 2020, it took most students by surprise – was this too good to be true? While living in a hotel may sound like a fun opportunity at first, the reality is more of a struggle than living in a traditional college dorm. Even simple things like doing laundry become an issue when it becomes clear that hotels aren’t really built for student living.
Mikayla Hopkins, a junior, currently lives in the Boxer Hotel in a room paid for by the university, along with over sixty other Suffolk students. She had to walk to a laundromat or do her laundry in the bathroom sink for the first month, because Residence Life had not yet worked out how to integrate student needs with the hotel’s normal operations.
Each room – at least in the Boxer and Wyndham hotels – comes with a personal bathroom, mini-fridge, desk, closet or hanging space, television, and bed. And while having a staff to clean your sheets and bathroom for you sounds nice, the suite life comes with its own challenges. “Should I be tipping?” Mikayla asks.
The single rooms provide students with their own space, something that is becoming increasingly rare when families and roommates are forced to quarantine together at home for months on end during lockdowns. Lisette Van Den Boogaard, a sophomore living in the Wyndham Hotel, remarked that it was “nice to regain the sense of independence that I need from college.”
It is no secret that the pandemic has greatly impacted our social lives, but the point of moving back to Boston was to be around friends and regain a sense of independence after living at home for so many months. Right? While Suffolk hotels provide students with their own space, interactions with others are few and far between. Understandably, no visitors – not even other Suffolk students who are being tested weekly for the virus – are allowed in the buildings, and only two people are permitted to hang out in a hotel room at a time. Unlike Suffolk dorms, where freshmen live, there are no communal areas for larger gatherings up to five people.
This makes it virtually impossible (excuse the pun) to make new friends. “I have a bubble of people I know are corona safe,” Lisette says. The people she hangs out with, however, are friends she had already known from the year before and reconnected with during the first couple weeks of the semester. Mikayla shrugs and says her social life “has suffered, but it’s not directly a result of living in hotels.” Her friends are all spread out, either at home or in the city.
ResLife is not much help. While Residence Assistants do their best to put on Zoom events, students are tired of being on Zoom all day for class and don’t attend. But RAs aren’t the problem. ResLife is prioritizing freshmen, Mikayla complains, pointing out that “We can tell that they [ResLife] don’t, like, care about the hotels…to the extent they should.” She says “It’s a nice hotel, it’s in a nice area, close to school…but I don’t think they are providing services or trying.”
This attitude is clear with the Wifi issues hotel students have been having. It lags, kicks students off, and is generally unreliable. Lisette says she has gotten in trouble with her professors before because the Wifi has lagged so much during her classes that she missed a question, and couldn’t answer when the professor asked. People have complained to Suffolk many times, and Lisette hopes they will fix the issue.
While the fall semester has not been easy for anyone, Suffolk students are working through the difficulties. Everyone has had to make sacrifices and adjust to a new normal. In what is an adept analogy for all our lives during the COVID 19 pandemic, Lisette says about her hotel room, “It’s not what I signed up for, but at least it’s something.”