How small is too small? Dorm paused over "worrisome" size , 265 sq ft for 3 paying $600 each (UCLA)

[Demovictory9]

265 sq feet is about 16 ft by 16 ft

How small is too small? UC Regents delay approval of new UCLA dorm, questioning room size

UCLA has been planning the best deal in town for student housing: a new residence hall featuring shared living, study and socializing spaces with most rooms going for just $600 a month — 66% below projected market rates in the pricey Westwood neighborhood where the campus is located.

But the eight-story, 545-bed project hit a roadblock Thursday, when the University of California Regents deferred a vote on its budget and design after raising crucial questions about whether the rooms were too small and what potential impact that might have on student mental health. The planned space is 265 square feet for three beds, desks, closets, storage space and a refrigerator.

“I don’t want to call these jails,” Regent Hadi Makarechian said during finance committee discussions Wednesday, “but ... these aren’t really good dorms.”

Regent John A. Pérez noted that research has found that “micro-units” have been linked to negative mental health effects. When a UCLA official said he was trying to keep costs down for low-income students, Pérez took umbrage at the implication that “for poor kids, this density is OK.” This prompted an apology from the official, Pete Angelis, UCLA assistant vice chancellor of housing and hospitality.

Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, an ex-officio regent, lamented the trend of “smaller and smaller” spaces as campuses cram more students into rooms to address the affordable housing crisis.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-09-22/uc-regents-question-small-room-size-of-new-ucla-dorm-delaying-approval

[WestMichRad]

1. My freshman dorm room was smaller

It was designed for 2 but there were three of us crammed in. It sucked. Our solution: one guy spent all his non-class time in the library. One guy spent most of his time at the bar (I don’t know how he passed, but he did.) I had the room to myself, mostly. Sleep time was the only time all 3 of us were there simultaneously.

Was so happy to find an off-campus place thereafter!

Despite all that, I’d say those rooms are too small for 3 non-related young adults to stay sane.

[Demovictory9]

2. Mine was a little smaller too. Had one roommate who stayed in the room watching tv

I kept away until bedtime. It was awful

[relayerbob]

11. You had TV?

Quite a luxury. We got to watch it in the common area.

[Demovictory9]

12. She had a tv she brought with her..the only freshman who brought one. It was awful

I would come back to the dorm late, walk down the hallway and hear her tv blaring

[ProfessorGAC]

46. The Dorms Where I Went Were, Too

I was a commuter, but had friends in the dorms. Rooms were about 12 by 15 for 2, or about 90ft^2, each. The solo rooms were about 10 by 12 but cost more.
These UCLA rooms are just barely 88.3 square feet per resident. Pretty much the same as where i went.

[haele]

3. Lol. I lived out of a 12sqft locker and a 10sqft rack for 4 years.

That is, until I could make enough money to move out and share a 2bdrm, 1 bath apartment for $100 a month, whenever I wasn't underway or on duty. 4 years in Pt. Hueneme, in the early 80's.

My biggest barracks space I ever had to myself was about 54 sqft. That was for about 8 months at my second NEC school, after I made 3rd class.

That covered a good 8 years of my life, until I got a shore command and got a housing allowance to rent a decent place for myself, if I wanted.

Haele
(US Navy, Ret...)

[slightlv]

6. That sounds like my shared barracks room!

At least, until my roomie got kicked out by the CO because I raised such a ruckus about her. A total slob... we were flunking every inspection, despite my side of the room being clean and passing inspection. I still got dinged because of her. A few times of this and even tho I was a lowly little airmen, I found my voice. AND had a room to myself for a little while.

[NowISeetheLight]

45. Same Here

Try a rack stuffed between a couple missile tubes on a boomer. Three high and nine bunks. It's amazing what you can live with. Once I went to surface fleet it was luxury... at least the X division compartment had some space to iron and watch TV.

[Demovictory9]

56. Damn that's crowded. 🤯

[Igel]

4. The USSR average living space per person was a bit under 90 sq ft.

The goal was about 130 sq ft. Don't know that they ever reached that goal.

For three people, that worked out to 270 sq ft (with the goal of 387 sq ft).

265, 270--that was was the government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had managed to produce for its citizenry. On average.

My dorm rooms in the late '70s (dorms from the '50s) were about that, though--maybe 160, 180 sq ft for two.

[DBoon]

5. I recall the old Co-op in Westwood had 3 person rooms about that small

Hardman-Hanson Hall, I think

[Celerity]

15. Floorplan

[Snooper9]

7. this is the definition of a first world problem

nt

[mn9driver]

8. I lived in a quad room smaller than this, in 1976

At the University of Michigan. I intentionally chose it because it was cheap. I used it for sleeping and nothing else. Saved a lot of money.

[LudwigPastorius]

9. A refrigerator?

Luxury!!

But seriously, my dorm was built in 1946. The rooms were double occupancy 196 sq. ft. with no air conditioning and a communal shower/toilets down the hall.

I have to say, though, no window would be a non-starter for me. There's a reason I never enlisted to become a submariner.

[relayerbob]

10. Our dorms for 2 were about 150 sq ft.

Not sure I see the problem here

[Demovictory9]

13. Here is how the dorm room might look like

[orleans]

17. those girls look happy

[Demovictory9]

57. They were told to smile or else!!!

[orleans]

62. thanks for the laugh! nt

[relayerbob]

22. Looks pretty nice

Three people is pushing it, but still quite doable.

[intheflow]

28. It would suck to be on the top bunk an adult can't even sit upright on.

Also, is there any room for things like a laundry basket for each student in the room, or, you know, a bookcase?

[Tarc]

63. Honestly that seems like sufficient space for 3, this is whining about nothing

I was in college in the 90s, and we didn't spend an inordinate amount of time in the room. Sleeping, occasional hanging out for movie watching or video games, and...um, "other things" if one could arrange for roommates to be gone for a bit.

Classes all day, eat at the cafe, study in the library or the student union, bars weekend evenings.

265 sq ft is fine.

[meadowlander]

14. For me, the size of the room didn't matter as much as having it to myself.

Being able to shut the door and have some privacy when I wanted it was everything. For neurodiverse kids and kids who are at risk of social exclusion, matching them up with a random stranger who is likely as not homophobic or a bully and then forcing them into a tiny room with no privacy is borderline torture. My first two years or so of college were kind of write off because I used to skip classes all the time when I knew my roommate would be out just so I could have some peace and quiet to myself.

The dorms/student housing I liked usually had individual rooms that only fit a twin bed, desk and dresser grouped around living pods of 5-6 with a shared kitchen and lounge space. Maybe only 80 sq ft of space per student but it was your space that you didn't have to put up with other peoples' bullshit in.

[ancianita]

16. Nailed it! SO very important for one's mental health. And the very point these students are making.

Learning is so much more life changing when one has time to process the day alone, without the distractions and added stress of everyone else's needs for decompression.

UCLA needs to be university-level smart about its students' whole lives; the idea that it's like a jail is appropriate and a big scale problem the university has to take responsibility for and solve. Or it's not living up to the mission of a university, just a profit making machine.

[Emile]

24. You think that's torture, try 50 sailors in

one berthing room stacked four high.

[intheflow]

29. You chose to be a sailor and were PAID to be crammed in there.

University students should not be expected to pay for being packed in like sailors.

[LudwigPastorius]

32. Are they forced to live on campus?

Living in a dorm was never a requirement back when I was in school.

[debm55]

42. At Penn State, all freshmen had to live in dorms. After freshmen year, it was your choice.

[meadowlander]

54. That was the policy at my college too.

Required to live on campus as a freshman. Option to move into private housing from sophmore onwards but I couldn't afford it (or would have been in even more cramped conditions there). And I went out of state with no family nearby so no option to live at home.

There were some singleton dorm rooms but there was a two year waiting list for them so calling bullshit on the study they cite in the article that most students want to live in 3-to-a-room arrangements.

When I did junior year abroad and did my masters overseas, I lived in university housing and students were never expected to share rooms. And the densities were comparable with the arrangement I mentioned above and probably with the dorms I stayed in in the US. So I really don't get this ideological position that students should be made to share rooms.

I went to the same college (different era) and lived for a short time in the same dorm as Tyler Clementi, a gay kid who committed suicide after his asshole roommate filmed him having sex and then posted it on the internet. When that story came out my first thought was "yep, know exactly how that could have happened".

My roommate had frequent male visitors and I'd be essentially barred from my own room for hours a time and have to find somewhere else to go. I remember a lot of time wasted just wandering aimlessly around the campus. Nobody should be put in that position just so they can get a degree which is basically a prerequisite for the kind of job they want. And certainly not autistic kids where it is essential to their wellbeing to have a quiet place to retreat to when they are getting overwhelmed.

[Demovictory9]

58. I recall the Tyler Clementi story..so horrible. I wandered the campus..i.e. hid

In library just to escape my roommate

[meadowlander]

52. Yes, that would be torture for autistic people too

particularly if they had to do it more or less continually for four years. I would lose my mind in under a week in those conditions.

Luckily being a sailor and living like that wasn't a prerequisite for basically any white collar job.

[hunter]

18. At times during my university education I lived out of a P.O. box and a locker.

Finding a safe place to sleep was sometimes a problem. When I say I lived in the 24/7 computer lab, that was sometimes true.

I'm not sure whether my housing situation was exacerbated by my mental illness or my mental illness was exacerbated by my housing situation.

The most stable housing I ever had in those days was sharing a tiny studio apartment with a fellow student. It was maybe a 120 square feet and the bathroom took up about a third of that. The "kitchenette" was a mini-fridge, double burner stove, and a small sink. This was before inexpensive microwave ovens. My share of the rent was $125. My bed was next to the mini-fridge.

I didn't like living there and had long been in the habit of sleeping wherever I landed. The apartment was mostly a place to keep my stuff and pretend to some kind of stability. I showed the place to my youngest brother once and his immediate response was "Shit, dude..." and that was the last we ever talked about it. My parents eventually left him in charge of the small orchard and three bedroom house they owned, after they'd grown restless and run off on their own adventures. My brother skipped the university experience and became a building contractor. Then my parents sold the house and orchard.

My roommate got accustomed to not having me around, sometimes for days or weeks at a time. The first month or two I think he'd worry when I'd inexplicably disappear but then he grew to appreciate having the place to himself.

One night while supposedly living there I got stopped by the police for running in the middle of the night and otherwise acting weird. The cop knew me by reputation, mostly harmless, and offered to drive me home. Yes, the local and campus police knew me. I was always an interesting diversion from their usually sordid graveyard shift duties...

When we got to the apartment my roommate and his girlfriend were having some very loud sex. Really loud sex. The cop pounded on the door anyways and identified himself as the police. A few minutes later my roommate's girlfriend opened the door, looking quite disheveled, and the cop asked if I lived there.

I was certain she'd be angry and say "NO!" which would have caused me a great deal of trouble, but she did not. She told the cop yes, I did live there, which I'm certain amused him in some slightly sadistic manner. He left me there and I stuck around long enough to make an awkward apology, and then I ran off into the night.

[intheflow]

19. Good lord, another post with "back in my day..." replies.

Back in my day…

“I went into the military and they treated me like shit.”
Translation: I was paid to be treated like shit but college students should suck it up and pay for the privilege.

“I didn’t have a/c in my dorm room.”
Translation: I went to college at a time when global climate change wasn’t killing millions in heat waves every year. Kids today are spoiled!

Seriously. I’m pushing 60 and feel like DU is getting too old for me when I read these old codger replies.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

20. +1

[Bettie]

21. I feel the same way

so, you're not alone in that feeling.

[MineralMan]

25. Well, many of us are old. And that's what the situation was.

We're not bragging about it. That was just the situation. Somehow, we managed to survive such hardships. Actually, we thrived, despite them. That's my point. Is that space too small for three people to use for sleeping? Depends on the people. Depends on what other spaces are available to them. Depends on lots of things.

Of course, the option is to get a larger student loan and rent a bigger space, I suppose.

All of us have the history we have. All of those histories are factual and real. People are going to share them. Our histories won't harm you...

[debm55]

43. Thank you Mineral Man I agree with your post.

[Sky Jewels]

34. That's one reason Facebook sucks...

the Boomers and Gen Xers patting themselves on the back for having the foresight to have been born in a certain decade. "We survived without bike helmets! We're so tough and great!" Yeah, well, the kids who died or got massive brain injuries aren't able to post on Facebook about how they survived, now are they?

Disclosure: I am an old Gen Xer, missed being a Boomer by a year or so, so these are my peers posting this shit.

[intheflow]

40. I missed being Gen X by a year or so.

[Sky Jewels]

50. So you're a young Boomer?

Like Stephen Colbert.

[treestar]

47. I agree it is stupid

When they in essence say “ we survived without helmet “. Except for those who didn’t, and that is why we now have the helmets. Our moms drank and smoked. Well there were some damages due to that. So now pregnant women don’t drink or smoke. Like if they didn’t see the bad results personally, they didn’t happen.

[Sky Jewels]

53. Exactly. And it's kinda pathetic how proud of themselves they are

for just having random luck.

I can think of several things that happened to me as a kid that could have ended my life or given me a permanent, disabling injury, such as many close-call falls off horses, runaway horses, grazed in the chest by a horse kick, went over the bicycle handlebars a couple times but landed okay, almost stepped in front of a car but someone grabbed my shirt and pulled me back onto the curb, almost fell backwards down very steep steps, almost broke my back when a massive ocean wave suddenly folded me in two, many other scenarios where dumb, random luck made everything okay...Not everybody was so fortunate. And the car seats and the helmets and the air bags and the seat belts and the child-proof caps and on and on have saved so many lives and prevented so many horrible injuries and disabilities, and these people on Facebook have the gall to sneer at these innovations ... ugh!

[haele]

64. The difference is that when I was in a class dorm -

That largest space - 54sqft - was not supposed to be the study area. The dorm room was for storing your immediate personal stuff and sleeping. Roommates made it nearly impossible for one to use the small desk and chair for much more than letter writing or filling out forms. Same when I was shipboard, there was a dedicated study area where all the "class" sourcebooks and supplementary items kept - and then there was the library.

My parents both studied and wrote their papers at the University library and study rooms, not at home where there were distractions.

The point is these kids have plenty of room for their "stuff", which is a smaller footprint than in my day due to technology. The $600 a month they spend for the dorm experience includes access to the bathrooms and study areas, as well as the common lounge areas.

Now, they should include windows and easy access to all these things, but having spent plenty of time in college/university settings as well as in the military, observing a student spending most of their time in their personal space dorm rooms is not a sign of a mentally healthy university experience. Even if the student is an introvert, the rooms are basically for sleep and immediate storage.

It's no different in the Greek houses. Space is at a premium. There's an average psychological space people can be comfortable in, and it's actually a bit smaller than 54 sqft dedicated per person for most people. Having a 10' x 8' room for two people is typical in most dorm rooms, both in college and military.

Haele



Haele

[stuck in the middle]

66. Lawn Dart Survivor Magnet

https://www.teepublic.com/magnet/9942700-lawn-dart-survivor

[Sky Jewels]

69. Ha ha! Too funny.

I can still remember the satisfying squelching sound those darts made entering the grass.

[demmiblue]

35. Yeah. n/t

[Xavier Breath]

38. Spot on. n/t

[ProfessorGAC]

55. Unrec

Arrogant and condescending post.

[tenderfoot]

61. +1

This place is like Free Republic these days

[hunter]

65. My children and their cousins suffered similar crowding...

... and it also cost a lot more than my housing ever did, even in inflation adjusted dollars.

I graduated from college without any student loans. My share of the rent in the first crappy student apartment I shared with a bunch of guys was $85. My grandma mostly paid that. By then I also had some skills that regularly got me part time jobs paying six to eight dollars an hour.

( I was also "asked" to take time off from college twice because of my mental health issues, which were probably aggravated by sleep deprivation and trying to balance work with school, but that's another story...)

My children worked throughout college but that paid only a fraction of their expenses.

Student loans didn't allow more kids to graduate from college so much as they caused colleges to become absurdly expensive Disneylands for the wealthy kids, and maybe the kids who thought they'd be able to effortlessly pay back their student loans once they got high paying jobs that never materialized.

Personally I think education and basic housing should always be free, at any age, and we should rip that money out of people able to pay cash for their own children's college educations, their housing in single occupancy apartments, their cars, and then furthermore support them in no-pay internships at prestigious institutions when they graduate..

Our nation is totally fucked up when it comes to housing, health care, and education.

My children and their cousins certainly had it worse than I did in some ways, and better than I did in others. For one thing, colleges talk openly about mental health issues now instead of sweeping them under the rug.

[MineralMan]

23. Like several people have said, my freshman dorm room was a lot smaller

than that, and for two people. 20' by 14' is 280 sq. ft. Since there's no kitchen or bath in that room, I can see how it could be arranged to handle three students OK. A lot depends on the amenities outside of that sleeping and study space.

[intheflow]

27. Did your small dorm room have a window?

That would be a huge improvement over this proposed dorm layout.

[sl8]

39. Where did you see where they lacked windows?

They mention that about the UC Santa Barbara 'Dormzilla', but I don't see it mentioned about this one.

[intheflow]

41. My bad. I was conflating the two stories. n/t

[sl8]

49. OK, thanks. nt

[MineralMan]

67. It did, yes.

A window that looked out at another dorm window about 25' away. We kept the curtain closed.

[Mr.Bill]

30. So if you want to

get laid, you have to talk two roomates into staying away for awhile.

[LudwigPastorius]

33. Yes, you have to hang two ties off of the doorknob outside.

[highplainsdem]

31. Gives me claustrophobia just reading about it.

[albacore]

36. I have a similar story to some here...

My studio - after the Marines and Vietnam - had a bathroom down the hall, and was so awful my mother cried.
But... I had privacy. And a place to study. I was just grateful to NOT be in a barracks or troopship. Or worse.
I think folks are leaving out an important factor in this...the study factor. And some alone time to think. Thinking is what college is about, right? How can a kid study with the constant movement of others in their space?
I know kids can learn - and need to learn - to adapt, but isn't the idea to make thinking and studying easier?

[LudwigPastorius]

37. If I couldn't study in my room,...

there was a common study room on the ground floor of the dorm.

Also, a big one in the student union. The library was also a three minute walk away.

Between, classes, labs, rehearsals, and time in the practice room, my dorm room saw the most use for sleep.

[debm55]

44. Same here

[LiberalFighter]

48. How much space do they provide for UCLA football or basketball players?

[Demovictory9]

59. Don't know but their dining room had table cloths!!!

[lindysalsagal]

60. These days students enjoy more common spaces in dorms

And academic areas. So, they're not really living in these rooms all day: they store belongings there and sleep there. But they can study in many spaces and eat and socialize outside the room. So, I'm not sure this is a serious space issue.

[madville]

68. Kind of a misleading headline

6 rooms out of 22 on each floor are triple occupancy. The rest are doubles and singles. It makes it sound like they’re all triple occupancy when it’s only about 30% of the rooms.