A College Housing Tale #1
A College Housing Tale #1
I attended Western Michigan University from fall 1978 to May 1983 when graduated. I took five years due to working full time while going to school. I had spent the fourth year (fall 1981 to winter 1982) back in my hometown of Muskegon student teaching in the fall and going to the local community college in the winter semester to knock off three general ed classes at a much cheaper tuition cost.
Working in Muskegon over the summer, I began a search for lodging for my last year at WMU and found a room in a house with three other guys because one of them was a classmate from Muskegon High School. I moved in late August. Being the late-comer, I got the smallest bedroom which wasn’t really an issue since I was both working and schooling full time. Between classes, studying & practice (I was a music major) and rushing to work third shift starting at 9pm usually, I had very little time in between any of it. And this is where the issues began to arise.
Frankly, my housemates were pigs. I’d find myself having to do dishes before I could even cook dinner before going to work! After several weeks of this I finally had enough.
I had brought to the house about as much dishware and cooking pans as they had altogether. I took all my equipment and put it in one cabinet and had the conversation with Dave and Steve. (The third housemate wasn’t a student, but instead was a restaurant manager and hardly ever there and never really ate at home). I told them I couldn’t keep cleaning up after them merely to be able to cook my dinner and don’t use any of my dishes or pots and pans from now on. Steve retorted “well, I guess we’re not as clean as you are.”
A new pattern developed. I would get to the kitchen, pull dirt dishes from the sink and into a bus tub, cook dinner and then clean and dry my equipment and put them away. Steve tried to push the rules one time by using one of my glasses for milk as he ate. I went into the kitchen, grabbed a dirty glass from the sink, rinsed it out, and went back to the dining room and poured his milk into it. “What? Oh.” he exclaimed as I washed MY glass and put it away.
But this wasn’t the end of it. During some downtime, I’d sit down to study or read the paper and be bombarded by fruit flies from a rotting apple core left for days on the end table. The final straw was the weekend of the WMU-CMU football game at Central Michigan University- a big intra-state rivalry. They both left for the weekend to go to Mount Pleasant and left the kitchen in an even worse mess of dirty dishes and trash. I was so incensed I filled the bus tub and went up to Steve’s bedroom with the intention of tossing the dishes onto his bed. Instead, I merely left the tub in the middle of his very nicely kept bedroom.
Did you catch that? “Nicely kept.” Dave had a very messy bedroom so he was consistent in his lifestyle. But Steve, the guy leaving apple cores on the livingroom table, had the largest bedroom of the four of us and it was immaculate! The next week after they were back from football weekend I told them I was moving out so they had time to find another tenant.
I was there studying during a couple of interviews with prospective roommates. One was a very nice young black man, student who also had a job. After he left, Dave said he liked him for the spot, but Steve hemd&hawed, whereupon Dave confronted him. “You don’t want him here because he’s black.” Steve said “yes” to which Dave said “that’s racist.” Steve’s response was “ at least I am open about it” and Dave followed “That doesn’t make it better!”
*****
I moved into a basement room for $50 a month in a huge house on the campus of Kalamazoo College, a small ivy-league-ish college right next to WMU. The house had ten other residents, one of whom was sort of the house manager. She paid the rent to K-College which she got from all of the other ten of us. A couple of the residents, social work majors and self-proclaimed socialists, tried to operate the common areas as a sort of commune which included a posted schedule of rotating cleaning assignments. I had no problem taking my turn weekly sweeping and dusting the livingroom or cleaning the bathroom. But one assigned task was the kitchen which meant doing dishes. I quickly crossed that task off — drawing a line through the words on the schedule. Within a couple days some dishes were piling up and the socialist brought it up when several of us were in the kitchen. I told them I had no problem cleaning common areas once a week, but I was NOT going to be doing anyone’s dishes. I just left that situation and not going to repeat it. It did not go over well, but I stuck to it and nobody pushed back.
As we got to May 1983, I was close to graduating and running out of money. When I moved in, the house manager required a deposit equal to the rent. I had by now paid rent for Januar, February, March and April. I told her May first to please use my deposit for May’s rent since I was nearly broke. That way she wouldn’t need to give me my deposit back. Her response? “I can’t give you your deposit until someone moves in to replace you.” WHAT?!
That’s now how deposits work, I replied! What if nobody moves in to replace me, I won’t get my deposit back. Well, I don’t have the money. Over the next couple weeks, a couple of times, in an attempt to shame me, she’d find me in a common area of the house with other people present and say loudly “when are you going to pay rent for May.” I replied equally loudly that I told her she can use my deposit for May’s rent.
Graduation came and I then packed up all my belongings in my 1973 Plymouth Fury-III and went back to Muskegon to begin searching for a teaching job.
