<p>Any current students???,... please..Son is 99% going to New Paltz, just wondering what are the best dorms? Are the new dorms open to Freshman, and are they worth the extra money? Thanks</p>
<p>They’re open to freshmen, but not sure how supply and demand works out. Lenape is all triples (with their own bathrooms!) and has its own little gym. Honors Program students are encouraged, though not required, to live there, and I think art majors are too. I know less about Esopus, but that’s where the Freshman Year Initiative program is housed. Those dorms are on the far south end of campus so if your kid prefers a central location or hates walking, go for an older one. I’m a parent, not a student, D lives in Lenape.</p>
<p>At New Paltz, the dorms vary significantly, so I would recommend checking them out if you can. Lenepe and Esopus are the newest dorms. Ive lived in Lenepe for two years and love it. The rooms are made for three people, so even though you are sharing with two roommates, everyone has their own space. We also get our own bathrooms complete with showers. Downside is that Lenepe is pretty far from everything. Esopus is nice too, but it is by far the strictest dorm on campus. </p>
<p>On the other far end of campus is Shango and College Hall. These are the oldest dorms, and definitely look it (I don’t think its been renovated since the 60’s). Since these dorms are connected to the music building, a lot of the music majors live there. There is always someone practicing music outside, which can be a good or bad thing depending on your needs. One great thing about Shango and College Hall is that they are right next to town.</p>
<p>Finally there are the suites and corridors towards the middle of campus. They are starting to renovate these and get new furniture, so they are definitely improving. Some of these dorms have a bit of a different feel. A lot of athletes tend to live in Gage, while Scudder, being a 10 month dorm, is the most culturally diverse. Scudder and Crispbell are also the 24 quiet dorms, which some RAs enforce more than others. </p>
<p>Hope this helps, let me know if you have any questions =)</p>
<p>I am currently living in Shango hall, and it is the biggest piece of **** dorm I have ever been in. College hall, which is connected to it, is probably just as bad. These are the oldest dorms on campus. I will describe in detail everything that sucks about this place in an attempt to URGE you to find other accommodations while on this campus.</p>
<p>1) As soon as you get here, you are required to survey the room for damage in great detail ON YOUR OWN and write down everything that is wrong on a little sheet. They simply tell you to be thorough, but don’t tell you what would constitute damage. </p>
<p>Not only is this not the job of a college student, but it is a complete waste of time that could be better served by having a staff member use a single high resolution camera with a flash. The idea is that they can charge your account for any damage (whatever that means) done during your stay, or damage you fail to notice, as though the dorm was worth anything in the first place. $3k+ for 15 weeks to stay here? What a disgrace!</p>
<p>2) Even though they are concerned with any damage you might do, they are apparently not concerned enough to notice the giant patch of mold developing on the floor of your closet. I am talking a white, moist mold patch the size of a small pizza. </p>
<p>I also heard another boy down the hall saying how there are crickets living inside his wall which must be driving him crazy. Not healthy folks. </p>
<p>3) The lights in the room, of which there are only two and they are quite dim, make a buzzing sound that will drive you crazy and makes them even more useless than they already are. If you live here, you MUST bring your own lamp. You should probably do this anyway, but it should not be as essential as it is here. </p>
<p>4) In order to get into the closet, you have to get up and push in your chair because the rooms are so damn small that there is no other way to arrange them. Not a huge downside, but inconvenient still. </p>
<p>5) The bathrooms… my God. First off, there is no soap nor a paper towel dispenser or even a hand dryer to be found. Don’t look for these items, you will find none. The showers, although having decent flow, will burn you repeatedly every time someone flushes the toilet, and this will happen 5-15 times during a single 20 minutes shower. A couple days of that will have you begging to move back home, unless you are poor and are used to such degrading conditions, or for some weird reason have lost your sense of touch. </p>
<p>The showers themselves do not have a soap dish or anything where you can set your bathroom items. So you will constantly have to pick up items off of the floor, which is slanted so your shampoo bottles and what not will not stand up properly. </p>
<p>Nor do the showers have a light in them in the first place. As soon as you close the curtain in order to begin your shower, you have about the same amount of lighting as you would if you had turned off the bathroom lights and brought in a string of Christmas lights.</p>
<p>One of the men’s bathrooms is so old that the shower heads are far lower than they should be, as though they were designed for men who lived 50 years ago when the average male height in the U.S. was several inches shorter. </p>
<p>6) I CAN NOT STRESS THIS POINT ENOUGH - if you value quiet, forget it. This place is built like a prison with these large, heavy doors that easily make a huge booming sound that can be heard down the hall and even outside the building, and people constantly slam their doors with absolutely no regard for the peace and quiet of those around them. The RA acts like he doesn’t know what you’re talking about, says he’ll talk to people as he sees them, and nothing changes. Total ****ing disgrace! After about 20 unexpected door slams in an hour while you are trying your best to relax or take a nap in a room that is 83F in September you will be begging to have your ears sewn shut. This goes on on and off all day long. This may not bother some people, but for those who are SENSITIVE TO NOISES DO NOT CHOOSE TO LIVE HERE! You will surely regret it. This is in addition to the fact that loud, inconsiderate women will walk down the hall late at night talking so loud you would never think they are only 8 inches away from their loud, annoying friends. The doors, although heavy, do little to insulate you from noise. Noise from the dorms above me, although sometimes bothersome, has not been as much of a problem. </p>
<p>The only upsides of living here are that it is the cheapest place on campus to live and is the closest to downtown. For some people your classes may all be on this far side of campus which is convenient. But you are far away from the dining hall, the gym, and most everywhere else worth being. To their credit, I moved into a room with a brand new mattress, but that does little to make up for the other shortcomings I mentioned. There are a couple of lounges in the basement as well as a kitchen which aren’t bad, but are nothing special and few people seem to be using them at any given time, and so meeting your floor mates is not exactly easy and may be awkward.</p>
<p>In contrast, I recently looked into switching to a Lenape suite and with any luck will move over there in a couple days. Lenape suites, although not extravagant and somewhat more expensive, are air conditioned, much newer and roomier and have a private bathroom for 3 people. The difference is night and day. If I can’t get this open suite before someone else does I may actually withdraw. That’s how bad this dorm is. </p>
<p>I hope this information helps someone to avoid this zoo of a dorm. I do not expect marble fixtures or a butler when living on campus, but I expect more than this. I registered on this forum just to post this in the hopes of helping other people out there. Enough said.</p>
<p>Beta 447, Thank you so much for the detailed information on Shango Hall. My son has sensory difficulties and would have a very hard time there. He’s interested in attending New Paulz next year. Can you suggest a dorm with air conditioning, quiet living, and close proximity to classes?</p>
<p>My understanding is that only Esopus and Lenape are air conditioned. They are the newer dorms and are somewhat pricier, but probably worth it. They are however on the far side of campus, but if your kid has a bike I believe these dorms have indoor bike racks so that would definitely help. There are also bike racks around the rest of campus so as long as you register it with the UP and have a bike lock you shouldn’t have to worry. </p>
<p>As to which halls are quiet, I don’t know, but I imagine the newer ones are probably better. Naturally, if you can get a room on the fourth floor you will not have to worry about people stomping or dropping things above you, so I would recommend trying for that. </p>
<p>When/if I move to Lenape I will post a review on here as to how things are. I’m glad my post was helpful to someone. It’s nice to know that I am not the only one with sensitive ears. </p>
<p>Also, as a correction to before, the mold spot was not mold but some other white sticky substance which I had to clean up myself. Even still, they should take the time to take care of such discrepancies. I am not attending this school to act as either a home inspector or a maid.</p>
<p>Thank you. I hope you move onto a comfortable dorm soon. Please keep me posted.</p>
<p>Well, here is my followup review, and those following may be surprised to know that I after living in Lenape for less than a day, I have already returned to Shango with pleasure.</p>
<p>To be fair, Lenape is newer, nicer, has a private, more functional shower, is larger and is certainly quieter than other areas on campus. But these features most certainly do not justify the higher price.</p>
<p>It didn’t take me more than a few hours before I felt as though the move was a big mistake. Let me list the reasons why.</p>
<p>1) LENAPE IS A FANCY PRISON - this is not even a joke, I mean this literally. The place is designed as a combination between a prison and a cheap hotel. The walls are literally large cinder blocks painted white, and the ceilings on my floor were so high that there was a constant tinny sounding echo. The only sound to be heard aside from the drone of the air conditioning is your dumb ass room mate’s ****ty rap music coming out of laptop speakers and his already incoherent speech made even less comprehensible by the architecture of the building. Your own music will also sound much less pleasing. </p>
<p>The wardrobes are each jammed together, and mine had a broken mirror on the inside. Once again, it was like seeing finished, plywood furniture x3 in a prison cell. The colors of the place remind me of a cheap hotel, and it is obvious that for the most part everything is made as cheaply as possible. The only thing missing was the too-small bar of soap in a paper wrapper with some brand name on it / a roommate named bubba who rapes you. </p>
<p>2) My understanding is that a lot of art majors are put in Lenape/Esopus, which makes sense because artists need prolonged solitude to work. But for many people this solitude will quickly transform into a feeling of loneliness and isolation, and it only took a few hours for this to happen to me. </p>
<p>Not only are you cut off from the rest of campus/society as you are on the far side of campus where there is very little activity (Shango is on the opposite far side where there is plenty of activity), but there is no community within the dorm itself. People are very isolated from one another and do not interact very much. There is little chance to meet people casually which is an important part of living at college. </p>
<p>If you go outside Shango on a nice day, there are people sitting on benches, playing frisbee, playing guitar, just humans interacting in ways that are good to do. Human interaction makes people healthy and happy and strong. I could feel all of this slipping away where I was, and it took less than a day for that to happen. </p>
<p>3) The blinds in Lenape are basically blinds placed between two sheets of glass and controlled by a small wheel on the side. Many of these are broken or only partially functional, and since you can not actually touch the blinds there is no way to manually close them. No such problems in Shango. We have a single wooden set of blinds that close just fine. You want light? No problem. You want less light? No problem. In Lenape? For hundreds of dollars extra to live there I would have to have called in a work order and waited God knows how long just to control the amount of light entering the room. </p>
<p>4) Oh my God the bed…in Shango I was actually blessed with a brand new mattress still in the plastic wrapping. I slept great once I got ear plugs in and the room cooled down a bit.</p>
<p>In Lenape, there are supposed to be 3 beds in the suite and 3 tables, not a bunk bed and a regular bed. I was forced to use the top bunk, due to a roommate who apparently isn’t even living there half the time. Let me say not only should the school be sued for false advertising, but also for endangering the students themselves. </p>
<p>By this I mean to say that the rungs that you climb up to the top bunk on are only half an inch thick and unevenly spaced so imagine doing that in socks half asleep or drunk or hungover. Not safe or comfortable. Not only that, but the bed itself shakes a bit and the side rail which is meant to keep you from falling off is shaky as hell. When you are up there, the air is very stagnant and it literally seems hard to breath. There is nowhere to put a fan, alarm clock, phone or anything for that matter. All you can see is a white ceiling and wall. Can you say PRISON?</p>
<p>Read my previous post, and realize that it took less than 24 hours for my annoyance with certain things in Shango to abate. Now that I am back I am sooo happy. I have learned my lesson.</p>
<p>If your kid has real sensory difficulties, then Lenape might be a good fit. But for people who just want to be around people, even in a casual sense, mark my words you will be very sad and lonely. And the air conditioning over there doesn’t amount to much anyway unless it is September or May. Other than that you won’t even need it, so why even consider it in making your decision? This is New York, not North Carolina. </p>
<p>Lenape is really best for people who have a couple really close friends that they are fine being around all the time and where you share the same musical tastes and habits. My roommates were very dumb, consumeristic, narrow-minded people. One kid was a white Jew who wrote his own rap lyrics and thinks he’s going to be famous and who talked like he had a mouth full of **** but didn’t know what political science was. The other was a 5’5" kid from Manhatten who thought he was Justin Bieber and couldn’t understand normal jokes. I opened his notebook sitting on his desk and it was literally notes from a consumer behavior class. Not a good sign. These kids were brainwashed little consumers who have no hope of amounting to anything. </p>
<p>Dorms are a give and a take. I recommend you sacrifice quiet and ideal bathrooms for human interaction. When it is just two people in a room, you have a much greater ability to negotiate with each other so you are both happy and comfortable as long as you are both reasonable people.</p>
<p>I was so upset with my decision to move that the next day I walked around the campus crying on and off for at least 3 hours, went and ate a lot of pleasure food at the cafeteria, and then ran 20-25 laps on the track just to deal with my bad decision.</p>
<p>The only downside of moving back was that while trying to get my fridge in place I busted a glass handle of whiskey on the floor and it ate away some of the finish which I will now have to pay for. But that’s a small price to pay for normalcy. </p>
<p>Good luck picking a dorm if your kid comes here. I’ve given you all the advice I can.</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice. Good luck to you in the future.</p>