As the end of the school year approaches, many sophomores and juniors currently living in the village are dreading the furniture haul back home.
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Some may be seeking a temporary storage space in the area while others are asking their friends and families if anyone has a truck they can borrow to take that big old couch back to New Jersey.
My own apartment is going through it, anyway.
This got me thinking, can the university offer to store the furniture over the summer?
Most of us don’t have room for the furniture in our homes away from school, and even those who do would probably appreciate being spared the inconvenience of transporting the furniture.
I bet the University could make a lot of money by mandating a minor fee to holding students’ furniture over summer vacation. As long as the price is significantly cheaper than storage spots in the area, the University can expect to rake in quite a bit of cash.
For me at least, this would be a much better alternative than having one of my parents take a day off work to make the three-hour drive and help me load up a second car with the sofa, television and coffee table I provided for my apartment.
When we take these things back to the Jersey shore, they are just going to be shoved into a corner of the garage until the end of August.
Are the apartments we are forced to empty out and clean before abandoning even used over the summer? Does anyone occupy the village apartments between commencement and the beginning of fall semester?
If the answer is no, I see no reason in forcing students to take their furniture with them, especially those who are squatting their apartment or are moving to an apartment in the same quad.
I understand the residential areas are deeply cleaned over the summer months, but since all the bedroom furniture remain, along with a dining room table and chairs, it cannot possibly be much of a hassle to lift three or four more pieces of furniture to clean the carpets.
For those moving to a new apartment on campus, it would be much easier to transfer the furniture directly from one apartment to another rather than carrying it all to a car, packing it up, then unloading back home, and repeating the process at the end of August.
Why not ease the burden on returning students living on campus and offer storage for the summer at a reasonable rate? It seems like a simple solution to me at least.