Housing situations are never a guarantee. Students can decide to leave or switch whenever they please, the conflicting part being that when a student who once had a roommate is now living alone in a double, they are forced to make a decision. A financial one.

There have been conflicts with housing because students have decided to either transfer out of Pace, or move to another room to live with a different student rather than their original roommate. That is something that is understandable, because it is hard living with other people– especially strangers.

Once those students leave their original roommate, they might be by themselves in a double room. This basically means that they are living in a single, but the room was originally designed to hold two people. Those students who are left in that situation are given the option to either find someone else to room with, or pay an extra $300-$400 for their “single room.”

It seems unreasonable to charge someone a couple hundred dollars extra for their living situation if they had nothing to do with their roommate leaving. I don’t believe that this is something that they should be charged for, and I’m sure those in this predicament would agree.

The majority of the time, this happens in the spring semester because that’s when students have gotten a taste of Pace and make their decisions accordingly. The timing is crucial as well because if this happens during the spring semester, students have to worry about paying that extra money and a housing deposit that is due soon after.

Now that means that Pace, as a university, is asking those students to pay, out-of-pocket, almost $1,000- that is a lot of money to ask from anyone. Except maybe millionaires. If students decide to leave their old roommate behind, the roommate left in the original room shouldn’t be penalized. It just doesn’t seem right.

Jared Bolden, a sophomore at Pace, was in this situation not too long ago. He had recently moved into Martin Hall from the Townhouses, and within a couple of days of living in Martin, his roommate just up and left him to move into another room.

Jared then received an email saying that he had either had to find another roommate or pay a $400 fine. The interesting part about Jared’s situation is that by the time he moved in, it was mid-February almost going into March.

At that time not many students are transferring into the school, and most students are still in the same living situations that they were in the Fall semester. Jared was in a complex situation. “I had no idea what I was going to do, I just knew I had to make a decision quick,” said Jared.

He eventually made a decision and requested to live with Patrick Davis, a sophomore student living in Martin as well that was in a similar situation. They requested each other and were able to solve that crisis however. Considering most students aren’t that lucky, why put them in that situation in the first place?