UC Santa Barbara planned a dorm for 4,500 students with few windows and only 2 exits

[hunter]

9. Maybe they need psychological testing for those assigned to the windowless rooms.

Otherwise I foresee a lot of misery.

If I ended up in a windowless place like that I'd never sleep there. I'd rather live rough. I can't stay in a place that doesn't have windows I can open and climb out of. I don't care if it's the tenth floor, I want windows I can open.

My own college housing situation was never stable. At one point I was living in the garden shed of a crazy Vietnam war vet. I can say crazy because he sometimes described himself that way and I was a lot crazier than he was, which is why he took me on as some sort of project. That didn't end well. Anyone who knew me then is probably amazed I'm still alive. I really didn't get my head together until I was 25.

Another time I was renting a room in an apartment complex from a family who simply left town in the middle of the night while I was away staying up all night in the computer lab, which was my habit then if I wasn't out running. I ended up squatting in the empty apartment until the end of the school term, ready to jump out the window with all my stuff at a moment's notice.

My worst housing experience was when a young women who attended the fundamentalist Christian church of a housemate tried to kill herself in our bathtub. I was the only other person there and I still have nightmares about it. She later ended up marrying my girlfriend long before such marriages were recognized by law.

It took me nine years to graduate from college and I was "asked" to take time off twice. I often wonder how my unstable housing situations and the lack of effective mental health care services contributed to that.