Oakland University Housing found rooms for all students temporarily placed in the Extended Stay America Hotel three weeks into the fall semester of 2017. The hotel reestablished its student-free peace and quiet.

According to OU’s Housing Director, Jim Zentmeyer, this was perhaps the first year since the beginning of OU’s collaboration with the hotel that OU Housing cleared the hotel so quickly with the exception of 2014. Then, the hotel was not needed to accommodate students due to the grand opening of the Oak View Hall the same year.

OU started collaborating with Extended Stay America in the fall of 2012 and since then, both hotel and OU have benefitted from that collaboration, Zentmeyer said.

For those that don’t know, the process of student placement in the hotel is as follows:

Every year, at the end of February/beginning of March, the returning students that choose to renew their housing contracts, frantically battle server and website crashes to reapply and secure a limited spot at OU’s residence halls and/or apartments.

Every year, some of those students succeed in their stressful efforts while the rest, who were not fast enough getting their contracts in, got a spot on the list of anxious anticipation and confusion, also known as the “waitlist.”

In addition to the pre-described mess, freshmen are coming in massive waves and demanding housing. Some of the freshmen are also placed on the waitlist.

Housing wishes to accommodate the students that can’t commute and need a home. So, Housing places many waitlisted students in Extended Stay America and promises that the arrangement is temporary and that beds and rooms will become available for them in the residence halls as soon as it is possible. By the end of the summer, most, if not all, students are taken care of.

Fast forward a couple of weeks, the tuition bill date is due, classes have started, stress thrives in everyone’s hearts and some students drop out of OU or they decide that they no longer want to live on campus. The students who were placed in the hotel are then moved to campus and everyone lives happily ever after.

Despite the initial resistance and confusion, most students that are placed in the hotel end up enjoying their experience.

The maid service, the catering, the personal kitchens, and the breakfast are all things that Nick Rehard-Titus, freshman at OU, said he would miss from his time living at the hotel. Otherwise facing a one-and-a-half-hour commute, Rehard-Titus said he was glad he was placed at the hotel.

The worst part of the hotel, Rehard-Titus said, was the distance and the walk.

“We were a little shut off… it was difficult to celebrate all the events of Welcome Week,” he said.

Leah Brown, one of the two resident assistants for the students in the hotel said it was nice living in the hotel, but that she prefers living on campus.

Brown had lived two years on campus prior to experiencing the extended stay at the hotel.

“It’s an exciting and intimate setting because we’re all stuck there together,” she said.

Zentmeyer mentioned that one of the difficulties of living off campus is engaging in the activities on campus because there is “a natural human tendency to pursue the path of least effort.” He further explained that students who live off campus find it easier to attend class and then go home.

According to Zentmeyer, it is harder for a student to feel as if they are putting down roots when living in a hotel as opposed to living on campus. He also said that students are closer to the services the campus provides when they live on campus.

Finally, Zentmeyer said he is looking forward to opening the new buildings that will accommodate students with a class standing higher than that of sophomore year. He mentioned that such a building is needed because “it is frustrating to tell returning students we don’t have enough bed spaces.”

With the new residence halls, Zentmeyer said that housing will honor the returner student’s loyalty and commitment and that, that is something he is excited for.