For 387 of Boston University's 16,000 undergraduates, living at the Hyatt Regency in Cambridge is skewing the college experience.
And according to a recent article in U.S. News and World Report, they are not alone. Several schools across the country are pushing students off campus and into hotels as student overflow is causing housing crunches. The University of Massachusetts, Lowell, has placed about 250 students in a nearby hotel for the year, while both Colorado State University, Pueblo and the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, have sent about 50 students apiece to off-campus hotels.
For those BU students — who are either volunteers, new transfers or part of a semester-long English language program — living in hotel rooms, advantages and disadvantages are both evident, BU's Director of Housing Marc Robillard said.
"[It's] a pretty nice little setup for students," he said. "The disadvantage of it is it's only for one semester … We'll move them onto campus when we know we'll have space, but we can't guarantee upfront where it will be," he said.
Last year, Tufts offered rising sophomores the option of living in rooms with flat-screen TVs, free laundry service, newspaper delivery and maids to make the beds and take out the trash.
While these amenities might have summed up a college student's dream living situation, there was just one catch: These heaven-sent rooms were not cozy dorms nestled within the vibrant Tufts campus, but hotel rooms at the Medford Hyatt Place.
According to Yolanda King, Tufts' director of residential life and learning, the move to consider housing Jumbos in hotels was proposed as a new option to solve the ongoing shortage of on-campus housing.
"The numbers don't necessarily go up," King said. "We don't have enough housing to meet all the housing needs of the students."
The hotel would have been connected to campus by a shuttle, but the prospects of life in a cushy hotel far from campus was met with little enthusiasm from students.
"The response was very low," King said. "Students prefer to still remain close to campus and still remain a part of the campus community."
Unlike the distance that Tufts students faced, the BU hotel is still very much within reach of the campus.
"[The hotel] is not further away from the center of our campus than the extreme west end of our campus or the extreme east end of our campus," Robillard said.
For Tufts students, location appears to be important, and many would not want to live too far away from campus.
"I would feel isolated," freshman Montana Brown said. "It would [feel] much more like I was commuting than like I was a part of Tufts."
Sophomore Desiree Muller agreed, saying that such isolation might be particularly evident at a school like Tufts.
"I think in a small school like Tufts, campus life is really important," Muller said.
Despite the shuttle service that Tufts would have provided, many students still feel that the distance would have created a practical nuisance for them.
"I thought that the notion of living there wasn't terrible so long as you organized it with your friends and all had access to a car, but I kind of doubted the ability of Tufts and of the hotel to give you the resources that you need to be able to make that … trek kind of at the drop of a hat," sophomore Ian Hainline said.
The idea of college students living in a hotel also raises concern for other hotel patrons paying for a tranquil night.
"I also think that one of the bigger problems that I don't think Tufts thought about was that [you would have] college students who are very noisy and rowdy, especially if it's your friends, and if the people who are paying for a hotel — even if [students] had an entire floor to themselves — it just seems to me like it would've been a ridiculous situation, and the students versus Tufts versus the hotel would have been a huge, huge problem," sophomore Julia Carlson said. "It would've been a mess."
After rising sophomores turned down the hotel offer, the university planned to put incoming freshmen in the Hyatt if there had been too little on-campus housing to accommodate them. As it was, there was sufficient room.
"I think it sounded great last year because we were pre-frosh, and in theory we heard of all the sweet deals and stuff like the flat-screen TVs and the laundry service," sophomore Jeremy Guterl said. "But now that I've been here for a year, I think it would've gone terribly. I don't think it would've been a very social living situation at all."
According to King, the Tufts campus offers many of its own amenities, resources and opportunities that no amount of nifty travel-sized shampoo bottles could replicate.
"The bigger piece is the disconnect from the campus community," she said. "They wouldn't have the benefits of … the programs that go on within the residence halls, but more importantly ... the connection to the community. Being able to attend meetings, being a part of clubs, staying late at the library. Again, the campus life, you can't put that in the hotel."
