Husky Housing Episode 1: UConn Over Admitting Students, Applying For Housing and Horror Roommates

In the first episode of Husky Hous­ing, Alex, Hold­en and Has­san go into hous­ing, hous­ing, and more hous­ing. From UConn over admit­ting stu­dents, apply­ing for hous­ing, and hor­ri­ble room­mates we cov­ered all the bases. Enjoy the first episode of Husky Housing.

 

Tran­scrip­tion:

Alex: [00:00:00] Hel­lo and wel­come to Husky Hous­ing. I am Alex, your host. I am here with Hold­en and Has­san, and this is where you can get all your Husky Hous­ing info.

Alright, first up we have UConn. Over admit­ting stu­dents. Accord­ing to the NBC, Con­necti­cut and UConn Dai­ly cam­pus, in 2024, UConn received 56,700 appli­cants and accept­ed 4,700 of those 56 700 appli­cants as fresh­men with the school over admit­ting about 400 stu­dents. What are your reac­tions to that?

Hold­en: Well, per­son­al­ly, I feel like UConn is not real­ly mak­ing enough hous­ing to begin with for how many peo­ple they’re admitting.

Every year it seems like they’re admit­ting more and more peo­ple, but in the time I’ve been here They’ve only built one new hous­ing com­plex [00:01:00] and they have plans for anoth­er but that’s not gonna be done I don’t think until I’m already gone So I feel like they need to work more on mak­ing more hous­ing if they’re going to sup­port adding more and more peo­ple on cam­pus I know that a lot of peo­ple have been forced to like, get some­one added to a room, like make a dou­ble into a triple, or add some­thing like that in order to make it work, but I don’t think that we should be like, hav­ing to, like, make our own hous­ing sit­u­a­tions worse because of their over acceptance.

Alright.

Alex: Yeah. Has­san, what do you think?

Has­san: Yeah, hon­est­ly I agree with like, every­thing you’re say­ing. I think It’s kind of ridicu­lous that like, I remem­ber, I think it was my junior year, when I was in Gar­ri­gus, one of the study rooms got turned into a bed­room. And you know, I don’t think we should be get­ting to the point where we have to accom­mo­date for things like that.

And they do have plans to make hous­ing, but we’re just, you know, I’m not sure how quick­ly [00:02:00] they can get those projects done. Because we had the high­est, I think, or the biggest fresh­man class com­ing in this year. And peo­ple were, you know, strug­gling to get hous­ing. Even peo­ple that have been here longer, like seniors, are also struggling.

So, you know, and also price of every­thing goes up even off cam­pus. So it just becomes hard­er for the students.

Alex: Yeah, I agree. I think that, you know, over­all UConn itself is Try­ing to be a big­ger cam­pus than it actu­al­ly is. I think bring­ing in too many peo­ple has been a major issue in the past cou­ple of years.

 Espe­cial­ly when, like, not only are you admit­ting, you know, a record amount of fresh­men, but you also have trans­fer stu­dents. And, you know, I know in com­mu­ni­ty col­lege where I came from, there’s a, like a UConn admis­sions that guar­an­tees you into UConn. So not only are you get­ting You know, trans­fers from oth­er col­leges, but you’re also hav­ing that from the Con­necti­cut Com­mu­ni­ty [00:03:00] Col­leges and the high schools.

Alright, let’s, , move on to room­mates. I don’t have room­mates, so I can’t speak on any room­mate issues or room­mate things that have gone on. But you guys have room­mates, so What is it like, you know, to have a room­mate? Do you have any hor­ror sto­ries of room­mates? Are there any ups and downs com­pared to hav­ing a room­mate to not hav­ing a roommate?

Like, what do you guys think?

Hold­en: So I’ll get into the hor­ror sto­ry in a sec­ond. I have had two room­mates while at UConn. My cur­rent room­mate is He’s real­ly great. His, he’s a bit messy, but I feel like I would rather some­body who is, more laid back than some­body who’s, like, extreme­ly strict, espe­cial­ly because I’m the type of per­son who has, like, a [00:04:00] real­ly rough, like, sleep sched­ule where I’m con­stant­ly chang­ing that, and some days I’m, like, more lazy with the clean­ing, oth­er days I’m not, So, he’s real­ly cool, and he he has a lot more cred­its than me.

That’s why, we have been able to secure at least the gen­er­al area of what we want every time. So that’s been great. The only issue is that he is going to be a grad­u­ate stu­dent, so he’s still going to be here, and we can live in the same, like, We can both live, I think, at North­wood, but we can’t live togeth­er, so I don’t real­ly know what’s up with that.

But I do get for safe­ty rea­sons. There’s prob­a­bly an issue with grad­u­ate stu­dents and under­grad­u­ate stu­dents. I’ll get into the hor­ror sto­ry after you.

Has­san: So, I’m cur­rent­ly liv­ing off cam­pus, obvi­ous­ly. I have four room­mates right now. [00:05:00] They’re four of my friends. So like, we were like in the same frat together.

That’s how I met them. But you know, I will say if you’re liv­ing off cam­pus, you def­i­nite­ly need to pick your room­mates wise­ly You know You want peo­ple that are gonna actu­al­ly help like clean and you know Do all these extra chores that you’re now can have to do but I will say like, you know when it comes to like Going to sleep and not being like both­ered by peo­ple if you you know If you want to just be by your­self, you can go into your own room and just chill there, but usu­al­ly Even in the house.

I lived in last year. We kind of just chill like in the liv­ing room most of the time We can have peo­ple over as well We’ve like host­ed some like watch events for like sports With peo­ple at our house. It’s usu­al­ly like a it’s a more like I don’t know how to like describe it the right way, but It just feels more, I guess, homey, I don’t know, when you get to hang out with your friends in a, in a house com­pared to a dorm.

 [00:06:00] But, I also have had, like, my own fair share of hor­ror sto­ries, unfor­tu­nate­ly. When I was on cam­pus, which, , was main­ly my fresh­man year, but I guess we’ll, we’ll talk about that after. I’ll let you get to your hor­ror sto­ry first.

Hold­en: So, fresh­man year, my first room­mate, I, I real­ly should have done a room change at some point in the year.

I did­n’t, but we just, like, were eas­i­ly not com­pat­i­ble. I kind of even got that vibe a lit­tle bit before the semes­ter start­ed, but I thought I’d give him a chance. And we did­n’t real­ly, like, talk that much for the first, like, month or so, which, that was fine. Like, just hav­ing the room just be just a room, like, I don’t think you have to be best friends with your roommate.

 But then, about a month in, he gets a girl­friend, and he asks one day if she could just like, sleep over. Not like kick­ing me out or any­thing, just like, [00:07:00] asked, and I, I said yeah. What I did not know is say­ing yes would mean that he would nev­er real­ly ask again if that was okay. So for almost the whole year, I basi­cal­ly had two room­mates because she would just ran­dom­ly come over and sleep over and I’m not even talk­ing like just like week­ends like they would, she would be over prob­a­bly every oth­er day, maybe some­times like on full like three to four day streaks.

And I had talked to him mul­ti­ple times about like. This is get­ting like a lit­tle bit absurd, but it espe­cial­ly got worse because at some point they kind of like became like noc­tur­nal Where they’d be like sleep­ing in the room all day, and then they’d like go out at night There was one spe­cif­ic time. I remem­ber where I remem­ber him say­ing like this is the first meal I had today, and it was 10 p.

m And then [00:08:00] of course when you have like two peo­ple that are like so com­fort­able being in your room like that some­times they do fail to Lock the door. Oh god, and so Yeah, I think you can get where that has gone

Has­san: Damn that’s bru­tal. That is bru­tal. So I guess I’ll get it in mind. This is my fresh­man year.

 I did­n’t like, I dun­no about you guys, but I just got like a ran­dom room­mate. I did­n’t like meet some­one online or any­thing. I was just, I was kind of hop­ing for the best. It was already bad enough that I got placed in tow­ers. And then my room­mate, he was, , I guess he don’t real­ly know how to describe it.

He was like, he was an exchange stu­dent and I guess some, I don’t know. I don’t know what was, what was going on, but there was like some instances where he got too, like, com­fort­able. He would like. Take show­ers and then he would come back into our room and like he would have his tow­el on and he would just like Start a [00:09:00] con­ver­sa­tion with me.

So like, you know, I would engage back like, you know I’m just talk­ing and then he would just ran­dom­ly like drop his tow­el and start chang­ing in front of me And I was like, bro, like, what is going on? And then, like, I brought it up to him, and then after that, he just start­ed, like, get­ting upset with me over, like, any lit­tle thing.

Like, if I just com­plained about, like, any­thing that he was doing that I, you know, I did­n’t like, he would just get upset. We had, like, , a floor group chat, and What he did was he made a sep­a­rate floor group chat with­out me in it. So I was like bro, like this is my first month at col­lege. I’m not try­ing to deal with this right now like I’m just gonna move out and I saw that they were offer­ing like Bus­by as an option.

I was like, oh, I’ve heard that’s pret­ty nice. I’ll go in I’ll see if I can get in there and It turns out the peo­ple that I moved in with they were like great like we we got along very well as two kids One of them was like, you know, real­ly into his like school­work. He was he was a genius He got like [00:10:00] a 1580 on his SAT or something.

He was real­ly smart The oth­er kid was also my friend. I end­ed up liv­ing with those same kids again next year and in Gar­ri­gus So got a hap­py end­ing, I guess but it def­i­nite­ly was off to a rocky start for me my first month here

Alex: Yeah, I mean, those are some crazy sto­ries right there. Like, what the heck. I think one thing I want to get into is like, You know, room­mates are cool.

Espe­cial­ly when they’re good. Like, obvi­ous­ly you guys have had bad and good room­mates. But like, some­times I feel like, you know. I’m a per­son who needs alone. Like when I need alone time, I need alone time. And most of that has to do with like, just me, just in my room, just play­ing video games on my X Box or like watch­ing YouTube or Tik­Tok or what­ev­er it is.

And so like hav­ing a room­mate would not be the best because also like, I feel like a [00:11:00] lot of peo­ple at UConn, they like to par­ty as this is a par­ty school. And, , I like to go to bed. Like, my bed­time is like 8 to 9 is when I’m in bed, nor­mal­ly. So, like, I, I, any­thing, like, if they come in loud, I’ma, I’ma be awake, I’ma be pissed.

 Well, let’s get into some of the ups and downs of hav­ing a room­mate. So, do you guys have any ups and downs of hav­ing a room­mate? Good and bad?

Hold­en: Oh, well, I mean, I do feel like I agree that, like, Me per­son­al­ly, like, when I get, like, upset, I do like to have, like, alone time. And so I do think that’s a lit­tle hard.

 It’s espe­cial­ly bad when you don’t like your room­mate like my fresh­man year room­mate If I ever was just like gen­er­al­ly like just had a bad day or what­ev­er It did always kind of suck to go back to like the dorm in that sit­u­a­tion My cur­rent room­mate, I think that he’s good because Since we do get along [00:12:00] he can wind up being kind of like a sup­port sys­tem every now and then like I do Talk about like issues and all that.

I think that it is some­times. Um Not actu­al­ly the best idea to have, like, a close friend as your room­mate. I think that that can some­times wind up being worse than you expect it to be, but at least in our case, we do get along pret­ty well, and like, we have, like, pret­ty sim­i­lar sched­ules and like, just kind of like what we want out of a roommate.

So I feel like there is a lot of com­fort there, and I think that, Like, when I don’t want to be alone, I think it’s actu­al­ly real­ly great to have some­one like that around. And I do think that also there’s like a good social ele­ment if you do like, like, being social. Cause some­times he’ll invite over peo­ple that I like and then, like, I’ll invite over peo­ple that he likes.

And so we’re just like, able to have like, hang­outs and real­ly just like, I think that some­times after a hard day, it’s [00:13:00] real­ly good to come back to, like, a group of peo­ple that are just fun and relax­ing. Although, again, there also are a lot of downs. Me per­son­al­ly, I do hon­est­ly clean up after him more than I should.

 But I Again, my, , my orig­i­nal room­mate, not to tell more hor­ror sto­ries, he, he did once yell at me for leav­ing a sweat­shirt on my own bed. So I def­i­nite­ly would much rather have some­one that is a bit messier than some­body who, , is like maybe too much of a neat freak. But I also do think that that can bring out good habits either way.

Like if some­body, like liv­ing with some­body, it does help you, like. S stay focused and stay on top of like clean­ing up after your­self and like being respect­ful, tak­ing care of like, I feel like when some­one else is around you, you take care of your­self bet­ter, I feel. [00:14:00]

Has­san: No, yeah, I agree. I feel like it’s, you have like some, some­one, I guess keep­ing you in check maybe, but hon­est­ly I feel like when it comes to room­mates, you real­ly just, you, you need to pick the right ones, which you know is way eas­i­er said than done, obviously.

But, you know, it depends on the room­mates. You’re either gonna have, you’re gonna have ups and downs to, you know, every sin­gle per­son. Like, for me, I guess the downs I would say is like, you know, what you were talk­ing about ear­li­er. Sor­ry. With the, with like room­mates com­ing back like real­ly loud at night after going out.

Like actu­al­ly this morn­ing, I got wok­en up at like 6 a. m. These kids were still in the liv­ing room like just, talk­ing, scream­ing actu­al­ly. So like, you know, that I guess can become bru­tal, but I would say, like, for me I’ve def­i­nite­ly had more pos­i­tives, because I’ve gen­er­al­ly liked the peo­ple that I’ve lived with, and you know, these guys are gonna be peo­ple I’m still gonna be friends with even after they grad­u­ate and [00:15:00] I graduate.

 You know, I also like going out with them and, you know, makes those things, I guess, eas­i­er. But I guess for off cam­pus the downs I would say is like some­times just like get­ting every­one to like pay stuff on time I don’t know why it’s so much of a has­sle But like I kind of like run Like I have to like han­dle all of the pay­ments for like every­thing that we pay for and like wait­ing for them to send Me mon­ey some­times some­times I’ll wait like even up to like two weeks so, you know that can also get pret­ty annoy­ing but It’s, you know, it’s, I guess I under­stand bet­ter because they’re my friends, like, I can’t get too mad at them because, you know, I do actu­al­ly care about them.

So, that’s why I feel like you just need to pick your room­mates very wise­ly. You’re gonna have ups and downs, like, every­one’s gonna have some ups and downs to them. But, you got­ta make sure you can deal with their downs, I guess.

Alex: Yeah. Do you have any, like, [00:16:00] When you’re look­ing for a room­mate, do you have any qual­i­ties that you want more than others?

I’m

Has­san: not sure if there’s any like qual­i­ties I guess like if if they’re like known for being like super dirty Then i’m not gonna want to live with them most like­ly if they’re known to like You know be up like all night and like scream­ing all the time or some­thing like that then I feel like i’m gonna be straight away, but I feel like as long as you’re just like a Reg­u­lar per­son you you can get along you also need to have like some sort of under­stand­ing like, you know if one per­son is like not clean­ing much then you got to just talk to him, but you have to make sure you don’t talk to him in like a Con­de­scend­ing way or like a way where you’re like kind of like yelling at them, you know You just got a I guess deal with con­flicts, you know Hon­or­able man­ner you got to be respectful

Hold­en: I feel like I I, I want [00:17:00] them to have, like, at least be clean with, like, oth­er peo­ple’s spaces, like, if their own desk is messy, I don’t real­ly care, but to not, like, upset, like, the over­all, like, room atmos­phere, and then since I am some­body who does, like, some­times stay up late, but I’m not, like, loud, I do like it when they’re, like, okay with that, as long as, like, I’m not being a jerk about it, I think that it’s nice to, like, Be able to kind of, like, live your own schedule.

 I think that per­son­al­ly I look for more, like, social qual­i­ties instead of liv­ing qual­i­ties. Because I feel like if I can’t get along with them, like, social­ly, I’m not gonna get along with them in terms of, like, the phys­i­cal nature of the room. So I more try to hope for some­body who’s, like, a lit­tle more, like, Under­stand­ing and like a kinder person.

I don’t real­ly want some­body that’s like hate­ful in any sort [00:18:00] of way of life So, yeah, I feel like I nor­mal­ly try to find some­body who’s like I Think that well, we might not get along as like friends. We’re at least like Be pret­ty agree­able with each oth­er, I guess

Has­san: No, I agree I agree if I can’t get along with them I can’t live with them And,

Alex: you know, wind­ing down, do you have any final thoughts about hous­ing at UConn?

Hold­en: Well, I think that a lit­tle small issue I did want to bring up is recent­ly, like, the snow. Just because my dorm, we had the, like, the snow­storm over the week­end, and then, They, like, salt­ed some of our side­walks, but not real­ly all of them, and then, like, there was still, like, a lot of ice, even just around cam­pus, but, like, I live at Hill­top, and so you have to walk so far to get on cam­pus, and when that side­walk’s icy, it’s, like, why do we even [00:19:00] have class­es today?

But then, off cam­pus, I do know peo­ple who, again, only, like, a few min­utes off cam­pus, but, like, their roads weren’t even plowed. So. They like, like, I think when peo­ple think about, like, com­muters, they think about, like, peo­ple, like, going, like, real­ly far on the high­way or some­thing. But, like, we live in a rel­a­tive­ly, like, rur­al place with a lot of, like, streets that I imag­ine liv­ing off cam­pus must be hard on because, well, it’s not real­ly UCon­n’s fault.

 If the places aren’t plowed and they don’t can­cel class­es, like, that is awful for these off cam­pus peo­ple. But then they also want you to live off cam­pus because they don’t have enough housing.

Has­san: Yep, no, I agree. , like, I have to deal with that a lot, obvi­ous­ly, recent­ly, and it’s been ter­ri­ble. There’s ice, like, everywhere.

It’s like they did­n’t even, like, salt the grounds. I feel like it’s some­thing very sim­ple that could’ve been done, but, I even saw on, like, Yik Yak, the oth­er [00:20:00] day, this girl, like, fell and broke her hand after slip­ping on ice, and, like, she’s, like, get­ting a lawyer and suing the school, appar­ent­ly. So, maybe, you know, that’ll get them to start act­ing right when it comes to that.

But, yeah, it is tough. It’s kind of just, We’re kind of screwed because of where we live. And, I mean, I think it’s sup­posed to be get­ting warmer, but it’s, it’s been a bru­tal win­ter. I feel like, I feel like this one’s been a lit­tle bit worse than usu­al, espe­cial­ly with the winds. It’s been ter­ri­ble. It’s like blow­ing all in my face every time I walk somewhere.

Alex: Yeah. I will say that I did notice that like, the day, a cou­ple days after, when the, like, side­walks were super icy, they did not salt for like two days.

Has­san: Yeah.

Alex: And it like, it was like I almost slipped and fell walk­ing back from like south to Sprague like five times. ’cause the, the side­walks are so icy. And I think that’s it.

 I’m Alex. That’s Hold­en and Has­san. And thank you for [00:21:00] lis­ten­ing to Husky Hous­ing for all your Husky housing.

 

Links To Research:

NBC UConn Hous­ing Over Admit­ting Students

Dai­ly Cam­pus UConn Hous­ing Over Admit­ting Students