Education

Students live in squalor at elite university

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Robby Soave Reporter
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Collapsed ceilings. Rotting walls. Feces on the stairs. Floors littered with condoms.

The price tag for a room in this hellhole? Between $7,000 and $17,000 for the year.

Welcome to the dormitory experience at George Washington University.

Since July 30, GWU students have been documenting the states of uncleanliness and disrepair into which several on-campus residency facilities have fallen, according to The College Fix. A Facebook page, “George Washington Housing Horrors,” provides gruesome evidence of the squalor they endured.

One building, the Aston, has holes in its ceiling, a dislodged shower head and a permanently clogged toilet.

At Ivory Tower, another dorm, fungi is growing in the walls and mushrooms are bursting out of the ceiling.

The creators of the Facebook page called it a “public shaming campaign” intended to force administrators to finally spruce up the dorm.

“When someone does something that’s unethical behavior, you make an example of that person who has done something horrible,” said Ayla Nejad, co-creator of the page, in a statement. Nejad stayed at GWU while interning in Washington, DC this summer, and was shocked at both the deplorable conditions and the university’s indifference to them.

Peter Konwerski, dean of student affairs at GWU, said the pictures weren’t representative of the overall dorm experience. Nevertheless, he pledged to resolve the issues and be more attentive to students’ needs.

“It’s regrettable that we have some rooms that have had some damage, and we certainly want to repair them, but it’s not the vast majority of our rooms,” he said in a statement.

Still, students might expect all the GWU rooms to be in tip top shape. For one thing, The Princeton Review ranked them the 10th best dorms in the country. For another, they cost a fortune.

A dorm room at GWU costs between $7,000 and $17,000 per school year, depending on the building and the size of the room. Students pay almost $400 in rent each week, according to the Facebook page.

Tuition isn’t cheap, either. GWU undergraduates pay over $47,000 a year.

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