Editors,

The situation my friends and myself have been experiencing is so painfully frustrating that perhaps you’ll deem it worth publishing. Allow me to elaborate:

 We moved into Flint Village at the beginning of the Fall 07 semester. When we applied, we put in for a four person apartment and when we received our room assignments, were dismayed to find that we had been separated into two groups of two, with the other two rooms in each apartment inhabited by random people who had extended their leases. We ended up in the same building, a floor apart. This was understandable, if they were unable to find space for us that they’d split us up to accommodate us as best they could. However, we spoke to the two roommates of our friends who lived upstairs from us and they had no problem in swapping apartments with us if it could be done officially. We wrote a letter with all of the information, signed and dated by everyone, even including the people in both apartments that weren’t moving anywhere. The letter stated that we did not need the rooms “turned over,” or cleaned in preparation for us to move in, as is standard when they have people moving in.             

We brought that to the complex director here at Flint Village, Anthony DiCerbo, and were told that he would have to consider it. We were led on like this for weeks, until we finally were told that it would not be possible. Lateral moves could not be done, we were told, and that if we were given the move that the supposed throngs of people in similar situations would hear about it and demands to have their desired moves take place as well. We heard other excuses; that it’s not as easy to move someone as it is in the dorms, etc. What’s difficult about two people trading spaces and keys with no involvement required from the administration? Minimal paperwork noting the change in the lease? We’d been living on campus for two years already, and were about to begin our third, paying a good sum of money to live here. Why shouldn’t our request and any other reasonable requests like ours be honored? It already began to seem that this whole system was geared to minimize any sort of work on the part of the complex director.

 After getting the runaround for a while, we reluctantly gave up and settled in to our rooms. As luck would have it, the random roommates in both my room and our other friends’ room were very studious, grade-oriented seniors, and neither pair took kindly to having to share a space with us. Had the room swap occurred, I’m sure all occupants would have ended up a lot happier. We did note this in our letter. It obviously didn’t make a difference.

 Now January has rolled around and this means that it was recently time to submit “Intent to Renew or Vacate” forms online. Lateral movement was an option on the forms. The two random roommates of our friends’ upstairs are graduating and moving out. Our friends are renewing their leases. You’d think there’d be no problem in moving us up into the spaces left behind. We spoke early on to the complex director and were told that it would be strongly considered if we submitted everything in writing, including signed letters from the two seniors stating that they were indeed moving out. We brought everything to him and waited.

 Eventually we were told that we had “misunderstood” (I believe we just weren’t told in the first place). The complex director said that the only way that our lateral movement could be accommodated would be if the two roommates living in my apartment were vacating as well, because then we would be considered a ‘consolidation’ and they would have a full 4-person apartment to assign to incoming residents. Our roommates are not all moving out, he told us. Naturally, he made us wait past the deadline for the submission of the intent to renew forms, and although we had already submitted for a lateral movement, we also had the option to upgrade to a two-bedroom apartment, with just myself and my roommate. We were told that we could come to the office in person and change our option from “lateral” to “upgrade” because he couldn’t do the lateral movement. So now that we’ve once again given up on any chance of moving in with our friends, we’re also told that we’re lucky to have the option to upgrade because we waited so long. If we take the upgrade, we also had to agree that we’re not going to need the rooms ‘turned over’, which would happen had we just upgraded in the first place.

Thank You,

Frustrated Flint Residents