Sample Newsletter Excerpt
New Residence Hall Opens
"I say it's a luxury high-rise," Ann Marie Grappo, director of Residential Life, tells a group of Student Affairs staff gathered for a tour of the new 31st Street Residence Hall at 406 West 31st Street. And she isn't the only one who thinks this way.
"I love it," says Christine Evangelista, a third-year student in Fashion Merchandising Management from Staten Island who shares a double room on the ninth floor. "It's clean, it's new, and the gym and the laundromat make life so much easier." "P.S.," she adds, "the showers are huge." Jennifer Liu, a second-year FMM student from Bayside, Queens, is similarly impressed. "It's very, very spacious," she says of the triple she shares on the third floor. "It's really big, and everything is brand new."
As returning undergraduates with homes in the city's five boroughs, Evangelista and Liu would once have been ineligible for campus housing. But the 31st Street Residence Hall, which opened this August, changed all that. With 1100 beds, the 15-story building raises the number of resident students to 2300, allowing the college to relax its "35-mile rule," which offered campus housing to students who lived beyond that distance.
The building's residents have just about everything they need on site. There's a cyber lounge with 16 computers and high-speed Internet access (WiFi is on the way); a gym stocked with elliptical machines, treadmills, and full-body workout equipment; a laundry room with 36 washers and driers; 24-hour lobby security; and a range of one-, two-, three- and four-bed suites, each with its own bathroom and kitchenette. As an added bonus, many suites feature spectacular views of the Manhattan skyline and the Hudson River.
As one might expect, the presence of 1100 new residents has had an impact on local businesses. Walk past the New Victory Diner at 360 9th Avenue between West 30th and 31st Streets, and right next to the sign for homemade yogourt, you'll see one announcing a ten-percent discount for FIT students. Just next door, Swan's NYC Cleaners offers students twenty percent off dry cleaning and wash-and-fold services. "Every day, some new FIT customers come," says manager Sam Hong, who emphasizes the mutual benefits of the discount program. "I help the students, and the students help me."
The 31st Street Residence Hall has also had an impact on the Office of Residential Life. "We've doubled our population, so we've had to double the staffing," Grappo says. The building is equipped with its own Residential Life office and a full complement of building managers, resident counselors, and resident assistants. The idea, says Grappo, is to ensure that students at the new residence hall feel connected to the larger FIT community just a few blocks away. "We sometimes refer to it as our 'uptown' building, but the goal is to make it seem like a seamless program," Grappo says. For example, the graduate students and returning undergraduates at 31st Street receive the same online orientation program that all other students in campus housing enjoy. "Just because they're returning students doesn't mean they shouldn't be included," says Grappo.
Grappo says that students enjoy living with a mixed graduate/undergraduate population in a hall that feels like an apartment building, yet has Residential Life staff in place to help deal with any problems or personal conflicts that may arise.
"They feel independent, but if they need assistance, they know where they can get it," she says. And if they need a workout, some clean clothes, or a fast Internet connection, they can get those, too.