Affordable housing options for students vary

  Deciding what type of housing is the right choice is a challenge for many students who considers things like comfort, affordability and convenience while making their decisions. 

   Some basic living expenses include food, shelter, clothes and entertainment.

  For students many different options exists about of where to live and how to eat. A student can live in the college residence halls and have a meal plan or choose to live off-campus in an apartment, a house or rent a single bedroom in a large house. 

  The costs of shelter and food can range $555-$947 per month. The low end being apartment living and the high a student living in a double dorm with the 125-meal plan option. 

   Starting college students tend to stay on campus their freshman year to meet new people. The dorms offer a convenient way to be close to campus and meet a variety of people right away. 

   Western freshman Christine Henie lives in a triple room on the Ridge in the dorm Delta. She is an out-of-state student and lives in Alaska when not at school. She said she chose to live in the dorms because it is close to campus and she did not know anyone before coming to Western. 

  In a dorm setting there are two options for the setup of rooms. One option is suit-style where a group of 4-10 people share one bathroom and the rooms are grouped together. The other option consists of single rooms and a community bathroom. 

   Another Delta resident and freshman Aja Brofferio said the community bathroom is the most disgusting thing ever. These bathrooms can be shared with roughly 30 people. 

   A dorm room must contain a bed, desk, and dresser or closet for each person living in the room. Henie said a person does not have much personal space living in a triple. 

   “I don’t want to be a debby-downer, but it’s [living in a triple] kind of the worst thing ever,” Henie said. 

  Brofferio said living in a triple there is always someone in the room. She said every person has a different schedule and it does not work well to have alone time in the room. 

   “Sometimes I want to turn on my music and not have to worry about getting evil looks from one of my roommates,” Brofferio said. 

  Both women said they plan to live on campus again next year because of the closeness to campus. Neither would like to live in a triple room again. 

   Living in a triple room these students pay $469 per month for nine months out of the year to live in the dorms. For a meal plan, which students living on campus are required to have, they pay about $357 a month. 

   For a double room, which is one of the most common living situations on campus, students pay $590 per month.

  Western sophomore Stefanie Zulauf lived on campus her freshman year and currently lives in an apartment near campus. Her agreement with her parents is they will pay her tuition, but she must pay her housing costs. 

  She said the apartment is more affordable for her than living in the dorms. She said she pays $347 per month for rent, $40 for cable and Internet and $18 for electricity. She said she also budgets $150 for food each month and finds this to be a generous amount. 

   Zulauf said she chose to live on campus her freshman year to meet new people and be close to campus, but the apartment offers her a way to save money. 

   “I liked being so close to so many people and it helps you make relationships quickly,” Zulauf said. “But with an apartment you are in control of your own food so you don’t have to spend as much.”

  Another option Zulauf had was to live in a house. She said she chose the apartment because it is more manageable. She said living with one person as opposed to two or three is easier on the communication.

   “If I have a problem with something I only have to tell one person instead of two or three,” she said. 

  Western sophomore Kristen Eide lives in a house with five other students. She pays $360 in rent, $30 in utilities and $10 for cable and Internet. 

   Eide said her favorite part about living off-campus is the quietness and having a fridge of her own. She said she is able to do homework without being distracted. 

   Another draw of having a house is having a yard, Eide said. Unlike most rental houses Eide said someone comes in and takes care of the yard. This chore can fall to the people renting the house. 

   A fourth option for housing is renting a single room in a large house. Western junior Hannah Norberg lives with over 15 people in one house. She said she lives in four-story house with three different units.

   One unit is the fourth floor, the attic, which has four people living in it. Another is her unit which is two floors and will have 11 people when one roommate returns from her quarter in Europe. The third unit is the bottom floor with three guys. 

   She said each room has their own bathroom and there is one kitchen for each unit. There is also a dining room, living room and laundry room in the house. 

   Norberg said she knew all the other women in her unit and three rooms are shared between two people. She shares a room and pays $387 in rent. For those with a single room the rent is $480 a month. 

   She said cable is included and with so many people utilities only costs about 3 dollars per person. 

  For students who are paying their own housing costs renting and apartment is much cheaper than the dorms. The cost of renting an apartment or getting a group of friends together to rent a house are much closer together. That is where the choice becomes more about personal preference, Norberg said. 

   Norberg said that she feels like houses have more character and apartments are plain and harder to make cute. She said she lived in an apartment the previous year and moving to a house was an easy change.

   “I didn’t plan to live in a house,” Norberg said. “It just happened.”

Whatcom Middle School students a year after the fire

          Almost a year after a late night fire burned Whatcom Middle School down parents still have concerns with how their children will cope with the loss of their school.

          Whatcom Middle School parent Wendy Albrecht said the time after the fire was an emotional one. Her son was a seventh grader at the time of the fire. She said she thinks these children have gained compassion for tragedies because they themselves have been through one. 

          “Without a school our kids are still suffering,” Albrecht said. “They are missing out on a huge portion of their lives.”  

          Another Whatcom Middle School parent Kerrie Zerba said her biggest concern was students not being able to identify themselves as a Whatcom Middle School student. Spread out among three different schools, the children are no longer the Whatcom Wildcats, she said. 

          “There was a lot of conversation about how kids can be resilient, but there was little conversation about being a Whatcom School and a Whatcom family,” Zerba said. “For kid that are at that funny age that’s all they really have is their school.”

          While the rebuilding of Whatcom Middle School is underway, it will not be completed until fall of 2012. Students have two more schools years, this school year and the next, attending different schools. 

          This year sixth graders are attending Geneva Elementary School, seventh graders are attending Shuskan Middle School and eighth graders are at Fairhaven Middle School. Next year sixth grade students will remain at Geneva Elementary School, seventh grade students will attend Fairhaven Middle School and eighth graders will attend Shuskan Middle School. 

          Zerba said she worries about most students attending three different schools throughout their middle school career when typically a student stays in one school during these years. She said being an elementary school teacher she knows how difficult it is to be a transient kid.

          “As an educator you know what it does to children and you wouldn’t do it to your own and it’s going to happen,” Zerba said. “It’s tough.”

          Albrecht said Whatcom Middle School parents are not ungrateful for the schools that have taken the children in, but she sees that the students are missing out on being a part of their own school. 

          Currently construction is underway to repair the damaged building. The exterior walls are being reinforced around the damaged inside of the building said Tanya Rowe, Communications Director for Bellingham Public Schools. The damaged interior will be demolished when the outside is complete. 

          The exterior walls are expected to finish in December and construction on the interior is expected to begin in the new year, Rowe said. 

          A few minor changes will be made to the outward appearance like altering window shapes, but other than that the building will be the same, Whatcom Middle School Principal Jeff Coulter said. 

          The original building was built in 1903, making Whatcom Middle School the oldest existing school building in the Bellingham School District. In 1916 the size of the building was tripled when new additions were added. The building was originally Whatcom High School and has also served as a junior high before becoming Whatcom Middle School in 1967.

          At the time of the fire the school was undergoing retrofitting, which was to provide better earthquake protection, Coulter said. The retrofitting was an 18-month process that was three weeks from being completed at the time of the fire, he said. The cause of the fire is still not known. 

          Zerba said it was never the building itself that made Whatcom Middle School special, but the community within. It was a beautiful old building, but it needed a facelift, she said. 

          Zerba said most people walked to school and everybody knows everybody.  The school had a neighborhood feel, she said, and being at a new school is different.

          “That was one of the things that was shocking for me to be in a new building now in Fairhaven [Middle School],” Zerba said. “They are so kind, but I don’t know anybody because they aren’t in my neighborhood.”

          Zerba said she is sure that if the fire has happened to Kulshan Middle School, those parents would be saying the same things. 

          “When it’s your kid’s school and you watch your kid turn from this quirky little fifth grader to a real mature eighth grader you think the school did it [changed the kids].” Zerba said. 

          Coulter is currently serving as the principal at Columbia Elementary School and he said it is nice and has supportive families, but he is looking forward to being back at Whatcom Middle School.

          “I’m a middle school guy. I have been for a long time,” he said. “I understand the middle school minds. I love elementary, but I love middle school a bit more.”