Your room at home isn’t this nice

Bwog caught wind of a mysterious room in Barnard’s Hewitt Hall. Extravagance Expert Maud Rozee and lucky resident Linda Crowley, BC’15, present the deets on this sweet crib.

From the outside, Linda Crowley’s room looks like any other Hewitt single. Once inside her bizarre pastel fuschia door, however, I felt as if I’d entered the Cave of Wonders from Aladdin. Linda lives the high life with her own sink, walk-in closet and, most impressively, ensuite bathroom. “My friends often describe it as a palace,” Linda says modestly.

While the rest of Hewitt makes do with cramped quarters for their wardrobes, Linda’s walk-in closet is enormous. “I’ve thought about getting a yoga group together,” she admits. After seeing her private sink and mirror, I was as green with envy as the spacious counter around it. She also doesn’t have to share a bathroom with the other plebes on her floor. “Don’t call them plebes,” says Linda.

Clearly Linda has found a way to cheat Barnard’s housing system. I asked her how she snagged such a sweet pad in the midst of Barnard’s infamous housing shortage. It turns out that Linda’s housing lottery number was so terrible that she was wait-listed, along with a good part of Barnard’s sophomore class. She didn’t even have to show up to housing assignment.

So why is there a luxury suite in the middle of Hewitt? The answer is that there actually isn’t. The room was designed to be wheelchair accessible. Somehow, there weren’t enough students registered for disability housing to fill all of the rooms, so Linda was randomly placed into one. That, or, as everyone suspects, she gave Barnard Res Life a hefty bribe. “That’s not what happened,” claims Linda.

Linda wasn’t looking forward to living in a Hewitt single, until she looked up the hall’s floor plan and noticed a strange tiny square labeled ‘bath.’ While she was confused, this was not her first experience with the quad’s housing mysteries. She had an odd room last year too, when she had a narrow hallway leading into her Sulz-Reid double. When she moved in this year, she was pleased with her new queenly set-up. “It’s really nice having my own bathroom!” says Linda. “Having a sink in the room reminds me of a hotel. I kind of feel like Eloise.” It’s also nice that she doesn’t have to disturb other people when waking up at ungodly hours to compete with the equestrian team.

Linda’s good fortune is a beacon of hope in the darkness of Barnard’s housing shortage. Wait-listed sophomores, do not despair; there is a slight chance that you, too, may end up living in the lap of luxury. I asked Linda for any final advice. “May the odds be ever in your favor,” she replied.