Race Hall

If you’re looking for a college dorming experience that’s a bit out of the ordinary when compared to traditional two-person rooms, then you might want to check out Race Hall. Opened in 2007 as a dorm for honors students, it extended this year to include incoming freshmen, as there was little room left to fit them into other dorms.

Suites
 
Each floor contains approximately nine four-person suites. A suite is made up of two individual bedrooms (each with two beds, two dressers, two desks, and two chairs), a common area (with a couch and chair), a kitchen area (with a sink, cabinets, and fridge), a bathroom (containing a toilet and shower), and a second closet shower. This is noticeably different from other freshman dorms, which are just a single bedroom. In Race Hall, you get so much more space to do what you want with. Most residents have stocked their common room with a TV and their fridge with as much food as they can get their hands on. Also, you can control the temperature in your suite, a feature many other dorms lack. Unfortunately, living with three other people increases the odds of having an inter-roommate conflict, so you have to be mature enough to solve such conflicts if they arise.

 Floor Setup


There are 11 floors in Race. They are co-ed, and alternate between guys and girls every suite, a distinct factor setting Race apart from other dorms. On each floor there is a kitchen with a fridge, chairs and tables, and stove and oven, because the suites themselves don’t come with anything to cook food in. At one end of the floor there is a common lounge with a TV, where residents of the floor can hang out and socialize. However, I’ve noticed that residents of a floor often won’t associate with any suites that aren’t relatively close to their own. At the other end is a much smaller lounge, designed to be used for studying. There is one RA per floor, whose room is right by the elevators. The RAs tend to be pretty nice and don’t punish students unless they really screw up.

Building Advantanges 

There are other features of Race that benefit the entire population of the residence hall. The 2^nd floor contains a small fitness center. While it doesn’t have anywhere near as much equipment as the athletic center on campus, it does have a small variety of cardio equipment and some standard weight-lifting machines. There are also free washers and dryers on the first floor. Unfortunately, there are not nearly enough to be able to serve the whole population of Race, and you may have to go during off hours to get a washer. Residents will also be noticeably impatient, removing someone else’s clothes from a washer or dryer if their cycle finished and the person wasn’t there to remove the clothes themselves. Lastly, there is a bike storage room located in the basement, so students that use bikes to traverse the campus will be able to store them in a safe location at night.

Front Desk Staff

The staff at the front desk is generally friendly and helpful. If you forgot your ID they will usually either let you walk straight in if they recognize you, or quickly look your picture up on the computer and confirm you live there. However, certain package hours are often inaccessible to students with later classes, making the retrieval of received packages more difficult.

 Cost

One of the definite things to note about living at Race Hall is that it is significantly more expensive than the other freshman residence halls. The cost is approximately $3000 per term, a couple hundred dollars more per term than other available dorms. But, if you have the extra money to shell out, then the benefits are great. You have an entire suite to do what you want, co-ed floors, a gym just a few floors away, and so many other things that make Race Hall a great place to live.