The Village Review

Let me tell you the story of my year at the new suites on campus. The school year started just as any other year. Everyone was excited, anxious and ready to see or meet friends. The tension started high and slowly disappeared as the days turned to months and the new residents got to know each other better and better. This intermingling of people helped to form new friendships and intensified others. Time came for a much needed break. This break made the residents realize that the fun times together eventually end. After the break, the residents make sure their time together is spent wisely. The group becomes almost inseparable at most times and picking up new members along the way to join in the fun. The residents realize finally that their time together in the Villages has come to an end. No one really wants to leave, but as Robert Frost wrote, “Nothing gold can stay.” Their time together has been very valuable and surely will not be forgotten by most. After writing this, I realize this is year two for me and the story for this year is an exact replica from last year with a few character changes. That has been my story of my residential life at OSU.

The patio area at the new suites are very nice. They provide a comfortable and cozy area to study, chat or a nice place to smoke a cigar. However, due to OSU’s policy about smoking within 25 feet of a door to a building, it is illegal to smoke on the porch. With this aside, the porches and balconies as they are called on upper floors, are very nice and can be a relaxing place to sit and enjoy the few days of good weather. For every positive there is always a negative and in this case the negative is that the door leading from the lounge to the patio area utilizes the same locks as other doors in the building; however, no one’s key works in this lock. This poses a problem for people relaxing on the patio if there is no one in the lounge to let them come in. Regardless, the patios at the Villages provide a unique feel and allow residents another way of enjoying time off from their studies or at least a change of environment for their studies.

After thinking long and hard about the best part and then the worst part about living in the Villages the worst stuck out in my mind from the beginning. The very worst part about living in the Villages, for me at least is the incredibly poorly placed lights in the courtyard. These lights are supposed to provide safety for those passing through the courtyard at night. The lights have provided sufficient security thus far. However, these lights are small pedestal lights that have a 360-degree area of light coverage. This means the lights situated around the perimeter of the courtyard along the walls of the Villages shine directly on the building as well as the pathway through the courtyard. I believe through the slightest bit of planning, the construction company could have placed these lights in between windows of residents on the first floor. This is not the case. In fact, there is a light placed directly in front of my window that faces the courtyard. At night, I can turn the lights off in my room and, even with a black curtain over my window; I can see everything in my room. It is almost as if I never turn the lights out in my room, it seems to always be daylight. This brightness took close to three months to get used to but I still find myself tossing and turning at night because of the light protecting those passing by outside. Which is great, they won’t get attacked and I won’t have to worry about an attacker hiding in my room either. So it is a win win situation, no attackers on the outside and I won’t be attacked by a good nights sleep on the inside. OSU and JPI, you really dropped the ball on this one.

The Villages are continuing the trend on the campus at OSU. The trend is promoting recreation among each halls residents. The Villages encourage residents to get outside and relieve stress the way they did when they were kids; by going outside and running around playing games that students enjoy playing. A favorite for those warm weather days is volleyball. The sand volleyball court that has been set up outside Village F has attracted many students to act on their fantasies of being Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer in Top Gun by playing shirtless volleyball for hours. Regardless of how ridiculous the students look, they all seem to have fun and it seems to be a safer alternative to other collegiate pastimes. The basketball courts around the Villages have also been very popular for students. These amenities are great to have because these are not to be used only by residents of the Villages but other residence halls as well. Good work OSU and JPI. You get the Bryan seal of approval for the great use of space around the Villages.

In the new suites with all of their amenities, it is a shame that the issues with parking have not been resolved.  Just like last year in Wentz, finding a parking spot turns to a crapshoot with snake eyes coming up more often than not.  The main problem I have with the parking lots surrounding the Villages are similar to any parking lot on campus, there are just too many cars and not enough spaces near the buildings.  The great part about living in Village E, located on the northeast corner of the Village complex, is that if there are no parking spots available in the lots near the building, there is an overflow parking lot behind Iba hall.  There are usually decent spaces available for those unfortunate souls that have been left out of their halls parking lots.  The solution…  Well, your guess is as good as mine.  Parking garage?  More lots?  There are lots to the West of the Village Complex that go unused for the most part.  As it stands, the only place for more parking would require the university to destroy the sparse areas of land students use for recreation.  I am all for walking, except when I’m unloading groceries.  Luckily there are the convenient 30-minute loading areas between the Villages.  This solves most of the problems I have with the parking lots at OSU.

Stillwater has recently received a large amount of rain in a short period of time creating some flooding problems in and around the town of Stillwater. These flooding problems did not affect the new Villages. However, the rain did expose a slight flaw in the building on the outside. No, there were no leaks on the inside, at least that we know of right now. But between Village E and Village F there is a stairwell on either side of the buildings. These stairs are covered and provide some shelter from the elements. During these rainstorms a few cracks between the walkways and the building were uncovered. The water slowly seeped through the cracks down the outside walls and created a nice waterfall effect in the doorways of every floor. I noticed one night as I stepped out of the hallway and under the covered stairwell, a stream of water that trickled down my shirt as I passed through the doorway. This is just another small problem, but one of many in the new suites on the campus of Oklahoma State University.

Located just inside the courtyard of the Villages is one of the coolest things about the Village complex, at least in my opinion. The courtyards contain one putting green complete with four different holes with varying reads for each hole. The greens are made of the same type of material located at some football fields but just a shorter length than the grassy-turf most see on the field. The artificial grass stays green year-round requires little to no maintenance. I really enjoy going outside in the nice weather and smoking a nice cigar and putting a few golf balls around after a long day of school.

The lounges inside the new Villages are very nice. There is one lounge located on each end of the U shaped hallway. Each lounge is equipped with several chairs, loveseats and ottomans; all of which are color coordinated to match the paint. Along with the comfort amenities also come the best part about living in the Villages, the television. It is not just any television; it is a 52″ high-definition television complete with its own TV Guide system and program notification. After enjoying the quality picture for nearly three months, we learned that OSU had in fact put up the money to get high-definition cable on these TVs. By changing the channel to the 100-01 through 102-04 one can see the available channels in HD. In addition to these HD channels, the Villages also receive about 40 channels of music. With these two additions to an already wonderful entertainment package, it is difficult to stay studying for those pesky classes. Especially on Saturdays and Sundays when you can watch golf in HD. Golf is by far my favorite thing to watch in HD.

The downside to the HD in the lounges is that I haven’t found anyone that has received HD channels in their personal rooms. However, I only know two people that have HD televisions and neither of them have the correct hardware to view HD channels. But with the 52″ widescreen in the lounge, one cannot get too picky about certain amenities.

On the topic of bathrooms a funny story popped in my head about a friend and his adventure one night. My friend, who will remain nameless and it is not I, was in a nice deep sleep and awoke with that sudden urge to go. He got himself to the bathroom only to find that the door confused him. He couldn’t figure out why the bathroom door opened out away from the bathroom and into the small hall leading to the two rooms. This puzzled him in his sleepy haze but finally managed to will the door open. Once open he found it was pitch black in the restroom. He needed light and fast because he was extremely disoriented and ready to take care of business. He reached to the inside wall of the bathroom to the immediate left of the doorjamb, and bupkis. Oh no! What to do? He reaches the last place he would think to look, on the back wall of the bathroom, and sure enough finds the lights. But with the lights come the ventilation fan, because the switches are so close. Not only is he squinting, his head is spinning from all the noise. Finally, he does what he came to do, but now he must attempt to go back to sleep. The story doesn’t end well folks. He couldn’t go back to sleep because he was so frustrated by his own bathroom and all of the problems one simple task had given him. The story takes place all the time in the Village complex. Once again, leave it to JPI to make the most custom and complicated bathrooms around.

This is just purely an opinion but the bathrooms in the Villages seem to be somewhat of a waste of space. The bathrooms located inside each of the living spaces contain a toilet and a shower bathtub. The rooms in which these are located are massive in comparison to the living areas themselves. This is a good thing in some ways and in others it is a bit annoying. The wonderful use of space in the bathrooms by the construction company JPI is great but I would rather have their use of space focused on a part of the living quarters that I spend a majority of my time. Another small problem I have with the restrooms is that the congruity between the rooms is almost non-existent. I believe that no two bathrooms are the same. Wonderful work JPI with the bathrooms, but maybe use a bit of the space in the bathroom to give people a chance to live in their rooms instead of run to their toilets to get rid of their claustrophobia.