Campus housing offers a variety of living options

By Laura Rico
Daily Bruin Contributor

For most incoming students, residential halls and suites provide
an introduction to campus life, but the experience may vary
according to which building a student occupies.

On-campus housing includes high-rise halls, suites, Sunset
Village, De Neve Plaza and the Hilgard Houses.

“Each dorm caters to a certain personality type,”
said Jeremiah Blankenship, a fourth-year biology student.
“And Dykstra Hall is better suited for freshmen, since
it’s such a social building.”

Dykstra Hall, the first high-rise dorm built in 1959, consists
of 10 floors, each housing about 90 students. Rooms running along
either side of the hallway ““ a feature characteristic of
Dykstra alone ““ foster a social environment.

Rieber, Sproul and Hedrick Halls have north and south wings,
with each room facing a blank wall.

Every residence hall and suite features 24-hour study
lounges.

While residence halls also feature exercising facilities and
communal bathrooms, which the housekeeping staff clean daily,
Sunset Village, De Neve Plaza and the suites have individual
bathrooms that are cleaned weekly.

The three Sunset Village buildings offer more spacious rooms and
air conditioning. However, some say Sunset is too isolated and
lonely.

“I lived in Delta Terrace my first year and everyone
complained about how anti-social it was,” said Lisa Aminnia,
a second-year business and economics student.

“Socializing in Sunset is really what each person makes of
it, because it made me go out and befriend more people on my floor
and in other dorms,” she said.

Some second-year students prefer to live in the suites, citing
privacy and a need for more comfortable and spacious living
quarters.

Saxon and Hitch Suites, hidden behind Rieber and Hedrick Halls,
provide students with apartment-style living and the amenities of
dorm life, such as dining hall privileges and frequent patrolling
by UCLA’s Community Service Officers.

But some students say the CSO rounds disrupt privacy in the
suites at times.

“When I lived in Hitch, there seemed to be a high amount
of CSOs on duty,” said Robby Tanouye, a third-year molecular
biology student.

Tanouye said he was written up twice while living in the suites,
once when he was in a room where students were consuming alcohol
and another time for making too much noise.

“They even threatened to kick me out of the dorms,”
he said.

After spending two years in the dorms, students often grow weary
of CSO rounds, communal living and dorm food, seeking instead the
comfort and independence of apartment life.

“After two years, the novelty of dorm life definitely wore
off for me,” said Kristen Sasamoto, a third-year art student.
“I’m definitely ready to move into my new apartment
next year, and it’ll be nice to eat at whichever time I want
to again, instead of keeping up with the dining hall
hours.”

But sometimes dorm life provides opportunities for involvement
in extracurricular activities that may otherwise go unnoticed.

Grace Byeon, a former Hedrick and Sproul Hall resident, learned
about one such opportunity in an unconventional place.

“I walked into the bathroom at Hedrick during my first
year, and noticed flyers for a female acappella group called Random
Voices,” said Byeon, a third-year Spanish and ethnomusicology
student.

“I auditioned and made a lot of friends in the process,
but I don’t think I would have become involved if I
didn’t live in the dorms.”