On the Colorado Mesa University campus, there are dorms that have been here for a very long time, longer than many, if not all, of the current students’ lifetimes. However, that is all old news, so the new Wingate hall is the topic of this week’s What’s That Building.
Wingate is the newest of all the dorm halls and it sure flaunts this aspect, with its updated furniture and appliances. It offers a twist to the traditional style of living, a hybrid between the classic traditional style and the suite life with its semi-suite lifestyle. Each room offers two rooms for four students to share, plus a local loft room for studying, card games, or Netflix, whatever the suitemates choose.
This semi-suite design is a positive to living in Wingate, according to current resident Lauren Schott, who lives with a roommate and two other suitemates.
“It is really nice because you have a study area where you can go to so you don’t have to go somewhere outside of the building,” Schott said.
Needing to worry about having a place to study is now a thing of the past with Wingate’s lofts, not to mention the apparent advantage of having a place to go if your roommate decides to bring a friend over for an hour or two.
Now don’t get too excited, because these semi-suites don’t come with anything other than the loft, making it still essentially traditional for everything else. Wingate has communal bathrooms, study rooms, T.V. lounges, washing machines and kitchens for the whole floor to use, so making a pizza must be done with the danger of hungry college students trying to mooch a slice.
Having this open communal area also allows for that classic college experience of meeting all the people on your floor and having fun with them; however, there are no “ragers” allowed in the hall, for Wingate is dedicated to a study-intensive environment. This can be great for the prospective doctor or engineer, but any future construction workers or the next Beyoncé should stay away.
Wingate is separated by gender specific floors and each floor has a fancy new color painted on the walls to give each floor its own personal touch that really livens up the dorm, leaving Wingate with a warm and homey feeling that welcomes all.
However, it’s not all fairy dust and unicorns; Wingate does have some flaws. The first of these flaws is the past events that made it mandatory for all RA’s to mention some lewd activities not to be done in showers. Other than the horror stories, if one is unlucky enough, as Schott was, to be on the first floor, some utilities are excluded from the floor plan.
“We don’t have a trash chute or a kitchen on the first floor. The lobby takes up the space they would’ve used for that,” Schott reported. Unfortunately, the ease of access to a trash and a kitchen are absent to sections of Wingate, forcing them to go to other floors to heat up a bowl of mac and cheese.
So if quiet halls, pretty colors and a practically brand new dorm sounds good, Wingate hall and its semi-suites just might be the perfect fit.
