I also thought they’d finally gotten AC in all the north campus dorms. After all, they made a huge to-do about starting the process and ripping stuff all to hell three or four years ago. Of course, we are talking about the PPD. It probably took them a year to finsih putting up orange fencing everywhere and digging a huge, pointless hole. If you don’t already know what I’m talking about, you will soon enough.
Lsura, I wonder if we attended the same institution, although I managed to avoid the lounge situation. I lived in a quiet dorm called Coburn, if that helps make a connection.
cough
I lived in Coburn my senior year - class of '95. Woodman Freshman and half of Sophomore year, East Quad second half, and Mary Low my Junior year.
Yep, I think we’re talking about the same place. When did you do your time? 
I feel brianjedi’s pain as well (well, I do have the luxury of A/C). This is my second year living in dorms at University of Kentucky.
Last year I lived at Haggin Hall, an all-male dump located on central campus where fire alarm buzzed on an average of once every 6 days and always after midnight (of course, I’m certain there were some incidents during the day while I wasn’t in the building). I’ve visited every dorm building here on campus at least once; they all have their ups and downs.
Upside to Haggin:
- Short walks to class.
- The walls are thick and sound absorbing.
- The hallways are wide, so we played tackle football, frisbee, golf, etc. in the halls.
- Has AC and heating.
- The windows actually open.
Downside:
- The hallways smell like ass and sweaty feet (perhaps common for an all-male dorm)
- Only one setting on the air conditioning: extremely cold. My roommate and I would turn the AC on and off every 10 minutes to avoid shivering or sweating profusely. Some days it sufficed to leave the AC off and open the window. Unfortunately after a freezing cold daylight savings time weekend, the building’s entire AC system was switched to heating and sure enough the weather during the entire month of November was hot and the rooms were brutal. Eventually the weather became cold, but my roomie and I never once turned on our heater because the heating from the floors below was so strong that we opened our window even in December and January to avoid burning up.
- The bathrooms are NASTY and they lack urinals.
- No sinks in the rooms.
- Fire alarms already mentioned. Generally speaking, larger dorms = more fire alarm incidents. Haggin houses about 550 residents.
- The rooms are tiny with very little shelf and “closet”* space.
- Rooms are also ugly with cinderblock walls and closets, shelves and “closets” scarred with graffiti and paint, and pipes running from ceiling to floor through the room. A buddy of mine on another floor came back to his room one day and found many of his papers and books ruined because a pipe busted.
This is my second and probably final year living on campus. I now live on south campus at Blanding building #3, a low riser next to Blanding Tower.
In the movie Office Space, main character Peter Gibbons and his neighbor Lawrence talk to each other through the wall separating their apartments. We humble residents of Blanding #3 communicate in this fashion on a daily basis. As CrazyCatLady mentioned, sound especially travels well though the electrial outlets. I don’t live in one of the towers, but I live on south campus (which includes two towers and eight 3 story low risers) where all the rooms are nearly identical. One can actually look at an outlet and see light coming in from the next room.
The showers here are nice except when someone flushes a toilet causing shower the to emit scalding hot water for about 3 seconds. There’s an idiot who is a 7th year senior (so I’ve heard)living on the floor above me. Two guys I know who are roommates get up at 7:30 am on Tuesdays and Thursdays just to go into the bathroom and flush two toilets simultaneously while “idiot” is taking a shower. Then, “idiot” yells out a long, slow “O! MOTHER FUCKER!!” with emphasis on every syllable. The roommates chuckle and go back to sleep for a couple hours.
AC and heating here is awesome with a thermostat knob and rooms are just as small but a bit nicer (compared to Haggin anyway) in appearance and have better shelf and closet space. I am not forced to hold my nose my walking down the hallways anymore and I’ve only suffered through one fire drill so far.
I must walk a bit further to get to class this year, and it would be very nice if I could actually open my window, but overall I’m happier living in B3 as opposed to Haggin.
I sympathize for anyone living in one of the towers. One of my friends lived on the 21st floor of Blanding last year and it took him 15 minutes just to travel from his room to the outside the building in the morning because the elevator would stop on every other floor on the way down. The first time I went his room to work on a project, he told me not to touch the walls in the elevator because people occasionally shit and piss in there. See this thread on the same topic.
Overall, I agree the dorms here at UK are pretty crummy, but I never before had the impression that they were must worse than dorms at other schools. I had an English instructor last year who said he lived a dorm at Texas A&M that had no air conditioning. Having no AC up here in KY is bad enough. During the warmer months, students in some of the north campus dorms that lack A/C take pillows and blankets into the A/Ced lobby and sleep.
I’m slightly surprised by this. Top 20 worst dorms? It’s that bad here compared to other public institiutions? I’m curious. What was your source for this information?
AC
CrazyCatLady: Holmes, Jewell, Boyd, and Keeneland still do not have air conditioning. Patterson hall was just renovated last year and now has AC. Blazer hall does have A/C although I’m not sure when it was installed.
brianjedi: You have my sympathy for living in Holmes Hall, perhaps the overall worst dorm at UK. At least you have a sink in your room. I know guys who lived in Holmes last year on the first floor. They would sneak in girls through those large windows.
All the dormitories here at UK are (barely in some cases) tolerable. There actually is one dorm that is worth the money we pay to stay on campus: Donovan Hall. It’s a short walk to class and has nearly all the luxuries offered by any dorm on campus and the rooms are huge. Unfortunately (for me), Donovan is an all female dorm during the regular school year, but it is coed in the summer. I stayed there last summer and will likely stay there again next summer.
Nevermind. My roommate just told me this was from the Kernel
Yeah UK has some shitty ass dorms. I’m ArchitectChore’s roommate BTW. South campus is the best place to stay (Donovan excluded). We’re trying to move off campus next year into an apartment to get away from this shithole. All of the dorms have several unique flaws that make none of them decent places to live.
Not to mention UK has some seriously 19th-centruy conservative policies concerning alcohol, visitation, and conduct. It is my opinion that UK and the city of Lexington as a whole suck major ass, but that’s a whole other subject that I won’t delve into because I have about 50 reasons that I could go on about for days. After all, there is a reason that about 90% of the on-campus residents leave town every weekend. UK is trying very hard to improve resident’s lives and keep students on campus but they are failing miserably.
Plus, the campus food is either cheap and half stomach-upsetting grease, or too expensive for a college(ie Ovid’s, Intermezzo)
It is my opinion that the only reasonable solution is for everyone to move off-campus.
sneak in girls? what, you can’t have them in your room? dude, that sucks!!
i can have one guest, of any gender, for as many nights as i want, and where they sleep is my business. just supposed to sign them in before 12 if they’re gonna stay over.
one girl on my corridor has her boyfriend over from france for the week, and another girl has had her temporarily homeless boyfriend here since october.
it’s great, the guy is really nice, and he helped us move furniture.
my college is better than i thought!
Guests of opposite sex can visit between 2pm and midnight during the week and between noon and 2am on weekends. This rule is easily and frequently broken at some dorms.
but still, they have a rule!!
Ummm, Mr._Garrison, if you hate the dorms, the school, and the whole city that badly, what the everloving fuck are you doing there? There are other schools, you know.
Actually, other than the stuff I mentioned in my first post, I rather enjoyed living in the towers. Only a fool tried to take the elevator down (or up, if you lived below the sixth floor), and there were the typical incidents you’d expect with communal living, but I was less than five minutes from BS and Chem-Phys, where the bulk of my classes were. Besides, it was incredibly easy to get Dr.J up to my room at just about any time. 
To be honest, when I was there Donovan was widely regarded as the shittiest place on campus for a woman to live. The heating and AC were always broken and there was NO ventilation from those tiny windows. It was really hard to get liquor or men in, and you got a lot of noise from the ambulances roaring down Rose to the Med Center.
Yeah, but like the no-alcohol policy (UK is a dry campus, except for the faculty club) and other rules, you’re made aware of that BEFORE you sign the housing contract. If you don’t like those rules, you’re free to live off-campus.
true, true.
but i’m REALLY appreciating my room right now…
as i sit drinking my hot whisky in my dressing gown.
Heh heh, dry campus? You guys need to come on up to Morgantown, WV, and have some fun…
I live on an all-girls floor, but Brooke Tower as a whole is coed. As for overnight guests of the opposite sex, most of the RAs really don’t give a fuck. If I wanted the boyfriend to stay in my room (cause you’d just love to stay at Towers wouldn’t you poop?), all I’d have to do is have one of my guy friends sign him in for the night.
It’s that simple. None of that sneaking around, “no you can’t go to the bathroom, here pee in this cup” bullshit. ArchitectChore, I’m looking at you…
And Mr_Garrison, I beg to differ about the UK dorm food. Overall, I found it to be incredibly appetizing and much better than the shit they they throw at us here at WVU.
Ok poopoo, I’m sowwy. Next time you come visit me, I’ll let you sneak around rather than pee in a cup.
- Haggin’s windows are smaller than Donovan’s but I would still take Donovan for the size of the rooms
- Put the alcohol in your back pack or put it in a laundry bag of clothes. I don’t see how sneaking in alcohol is a problem anywhere, its easy.
- I chose UK soley for its architecture program, which is quite reknown and highly regarded. When looking at schools, the architecture program was the only thing I seriously focused on. In fact, UK was the only school where I took the campus tour! If my education wasn’t so important to me, I probably would have transferred to another school by now.
Well, that was certainly the product of a brilliant and mature mind.
That’s my point! Sneaking in people should be a problem; UK needs a better visitation policy!
True, it is really hard to sneak in men during the normal school. Hence Donovan’s nicknamed The Virgin Vault. During the summer though, I had no trouble sneaking in SpasticKitty. I never tried to sneak in alcohol.
The ambulances on Rose street bugged me at first but I became so accustomed to them that I stopped noticing after a while.
No ventilation from those tiny windows? The windows open w/o a problem and are large compared to those at Haggin.
So you think being concerned about education a sign of immaturity?