Volume 67, Issue 7

Same Old Story in IHP

The latest spate of burglaries in the undergraduate apartments should serve as yet another clarion call for eradicating the housing shortage on the Wilf Campus. Joining the well-worn ranks of other, graver incidents demonstrating clear security inadequacies over the past two years, these recent midday break-ins further point to the problems that have been plaguing the IHP ever since its inception.

The claim maintained by our administrators that the dorms are no safer than the apartments crumbles when we take student frustration into account: not only do these displaced IHPers feel unsafe in and around their apartments, but they suffer through unwanted isolation and a host of other disadvantages as well because there’s no space for them in the three on-campus dorms. Even if this security-related claim were true – a big assumption, indeed – denying undergraduates their rightful place in an undergraduate dorm and instead dumping them in second-rate housing is unfair and unprofessional.

As recently as three years ago, every student who wished to live in the dorms had his request honored; now, however, an astounding 25% of our on-campus population resides in the IHP, whether or not they chose to do so. Placing more and more students in apartments because of the lack of dorm space is just another example of how Yeshiva seems to consistently sweep substantial institutional problems under its proverbial rug.  Instead of supplying us with such provisional solutions as renting out more apartments to meet increasing enrollment demands, our esteemed administration must eliminate the problem completely and, together with its new and eager head of staff Richard Joel, seriously consider diverting a fraction of its wealth toward the construction of a new dorm.

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