Keeping up with the posts on SoTech, I thought I’d offer a quick primer on the dorms they have as such.

First up, we have The Polyhedron. The Polyhedron was built first on SoTech’s campus, back in the 50s. Despite this, it’s probably (overall) the most well-kept of the lot. Solid metal-and-concrete construction, large block exteriors, thick walls, good A/C and ventilation. It’s in The Polyhedron that Greenwood Hall (the Honors dorm that Will and I were in for most of our stays), Lecter Hall, Dredd Hall, Bruno Hall, and Grayson Hall are located. In the normal course of things, Greenwood Hall and Dredd Hall are for Honors students, Bruno Hall is where most of the Assletes (and regrettably, the 1st floor accomodations for handicapped accessibility) are located, and Grayson Hall and Lecter Hall are reserved for the rest who don’t get into a specific one. The rest of the “student athlete” population tends to be in Lecter Hall because Grayson is a 24-hour noise-free zone, something they wouldn’t likely understand or want to be in. During the summers, most of The Polyhedron is turned into paid locations for summer camps, High School Jailbait Cheerleading Camp, and other such events.

Every couple years, they try to “clean” the walls of The Polyhedron, to turn them back to their “natural” coloration. The true natural coloration, however, is Stone Gray. It gets back that way pretty quickly in Colosse’s weather.

The second, and largest-capacity, student housing setup is Sauron Center. Sauron Center is approximately 17 or 18 floors high, and was built in the 70s. It’s more run down than The Polyhedron, the elevators rarely work, and on at least two occasions has been flooded from the top floors downward when some idiot tried to hang their clothing from the emergency fire sprinklers. Sauron Center has another rare feature: students are gender-separated not by suite, but by floor, due to the community bathroom/shower setup.

The third location, built in the early ’80s, is SoTech Plaza. SoTech Plaza is a set of two-story “apartment” setups, with single-person rooms sharing a bathroom. The good news is, you get your own bathroom. The bad news is: everything else. A/C is provided by loud, badly maintained window units, the walls are paper-thin, the metal skeletons are starting to buckle. SoTech Plaza was originally supposed to be a “temporary” setup until newer places were built, at which point it was supposed to be torn down and replaced with a real building, but SoTech are cheap that way and seem to intend to try to patch it until one of the buildings collapses on someone’s head.

The Pines is the fourth location. This was put up in the early 90s, and is what was supposed to replace SoTech Plaza, except that money became tight and they handed the reins over to a private management company to run it as apartments for a while. They got it back about half a decade ago, and seem to be running it about the same as SoTech Plaza now.

Finally, there’s The Forest and The Wood, the two newest ones. Almost brand spanking new, but put up and advertised more as places for the Frat/Sorority types to go than anything for the main student body, because Frat Row is slowly being torn down. They follow much the same philosophy as The Pines, being set up more as apartment complexes (which allow people to remain over summer even if they’re not registered for summer classes) than dorms.

For obvious reasons, Sauron Center is the most inexpensive to live in, and The Forest and The Trees are the most expensive. For those on scholarship, Greenwood is still the place to be.


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5 Responses to A Housing System To Be Condemned

  1. Peter says:

    My college in the Northeast had dorms of widely varying quality, but one common feature is that none of them had air conditioning. The administration’s response to complaints was that as school wasn’t in session during the summer, there was no need for A/C. That was an utterly disingenuous response, as classes normally began in late August. While the Northeast may not be as torrid as Colosse, it still can get mighty hot in late August and well into September.

  2. logtar says:

    Congratulations, you won a Thinking Blog Award.

  3. Spungen says:

    Hey Will, totally off-topic but I need to correct something I wrote earlier: Angelina Jolie is not part Asian. Her mom was a French Canadian, totally white-looking. She has claimed to be part Iroquois but her father has disputed that.

    I’ve seen earlier photos of her where she didn’t look as exotic as she does now. Whatever exoticness she has is probably a combination of random genetic quirks, French blood, and makeup.

  4. trumwill says:

    From all that I’ve read the housing situation at Tech mirrors the housing situations elsewhere (except that it’s much smaller than most universities of its size because of the high off-campus population).

    What I find really interesting is that for all of the complaints that parents have about the spiraling costs of college, almost all of the demand for housing is more directed towards posh Sotech Plaza housing rather than Sauron Center-style housing.

    It’s reminiscent of the SUV driver who stops by Starbucks on his way to work everyday complaining about how hard it is to maintain a middle-class lifestyle.

    Back when I was a student they were going to build two more Sauron Towers. Instead they’ve been building everything else. Not just at Sotech, but most everywhere.

  5. trumwill says:

    Peter,

    In Colosse failure to adequately maintain AC is grounds for a tenant lawsuit regardless of the time of year. That’s one of the reasons that Colosse has fewer elderly people dying in the heat compared to Chicago or Europe, where things don’t get as hot.

    One of the oddities about Deseret was when I learned that many apartments don’t have AC, but an apartment that doesn’t supply heating is equally invulnerable. Before we moved into the basement apartment we were in an apartment that lacked any AC, which was pretty rough.

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