By this point, everyone knows about the newest addition to campus: Genesee Hall. You would expect the new hall to be perfect, but little does everyone know, it has more problems than any of the others. And that includes the Freshman Quad.
One of the most noticeable things about Genesee is simply the space. There is no place where the students can run into each other, even during move-in day. But when the students are asked how they feel about their brand-new home, their responses vary.
“There’s just so much space! You could host yoga class in here!” said one student on the seventh floor. She says she dislikes the amount of space between her and her roommate’s things, saying it leaves too much room to move around. “I want to be close to my roommate, but these spacious rooms just aren’t helping.”
The students can’t stand the space when they need to huddle together for warmth in the frigid hall. With the state-of-the-art building comes new amenities as well, like a part-time kitchen, brand new TVs with no user’s guides, and a fully functional AC.
“It’s always so cold in there!” Toliver Oole exclaimed at the time of interview. He sat in the fifth floor lounge, wearing a parka and snowpants, while other students meandered outside in just their shorts and Birkenstocks.
“It’s impossible to control it, so it’s always way too cold.”
Other students however, love the reprieve from the vague heat of the outdoors when they come to visit Genesee. Akin to walking into the penguin exhibit in the zoo, the temperature noticeably drops a degree or two from the outside temperature and the freshmen often feel on display in a similar manner. Other students wander through the basic halls of Genesee, admiring the plain color scheme with the eye of a modern art lover. They comment on the students studiously stationed in the study lounge as if the freshmen are unaware of their words as they pass the open doors.
From doors that don’t lock behind them and their weird new flat-screen TVs to their uncomfortable-yet-fireproof lounge furniture and their slow-as-cold-molasses elevator, Genesee freshmen have been the envy of the school, so far. Freshmen don’t show up on move in day expecting to be the talk of anything more than about how annoying they are. The constant love and admiration Genesee residents get is more than enough to make any freshman feel welcome on Rochester’s campus.
