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in improving order. The first one, a basement apartment with no windows, resembled a cave. And smelled like several decades of trapped cooking odors. The second one, a thirdfloor apartment with sloping floors and walls, felt as though it were about to slide off the top of the building. The third, the only one we even fleetingly considered, was a first-floor apartment with level floors. It even boasted several windows. Unfortunately, they all faced out on the corner of Buffalo Street and Stewart Avenue, right where the hill flattens out. Day and night, you can hear the cars bottoming out when they speed over it, the tenant at the time told us. We looked at several other apartments that week. We became experts on Collegetown furniture. Oddly enough, it was all the same. The same black, green, and yellow plaid fabric on the couch and chairs in the living room. (Maybe there was a fire sale in Ithaca, we thought.) Mattresses on the floors in the bedrooms. (A new trend maybe? Bed frames aren't fashionable any more, we figured.) The same decaying furniture—chairs with springs hanging out—on the front porches. (Too gross for the living room?) And, accustomed to the sanitary conditions in the dorm, we were appalled at the lack of concern over cleaning in the apartments. But our week for house shopping was also the last week before spring break. The week when you have a paper or exam in every class. It may have influenced our final decision. Or we may have just become more realistic about what we were going to find. We found an apartment on Stewart Avenue. It was above a restaurant, so it smelled far more tolerable than other apartments we'd been seeing. It had a living room with a fireplace. And a laundromat downstairs. And a kitchen that at least two people could stand in. Utilities were not included (we'd finally learned to ask that question). It had one more bedroom than we needed (so we'll advertise for a roommate, we figured). It didn't have any smoke detectors (so we'll buy some). But it was cheap, for Collegetown—$720 a month, or $180 per person, plus utilities. And we were sick of looking. We signed the lease. "God, now I feel like a grown-up," Shannon said to me afterwards. "I wonder what we just got ourselves into." Finding another roommate was the first problem. We put up posters all over campus to advertise. But for some inexplicable reason, we only got responses from men. Well, how different could a co-ed apartment be from our co-ed dorm, we figured. Jonathan seemed A Jenny Wang '87 in her Eddy Street apartment Job list is on the door. really nice. And delightfully normal compared to some of the other potential apartmentmates we'd met. I called my parents to tell them the good news. To my surprise, they were less than delighted. "What do you mean you're going to be living with a man?" they asked me. I tried to explain the situation to them: "School ends next week. We don't have time to find anyone else.'' I tried to rationalize the situation: "Look, I have a brother at home. That's living with a guy too.'' I tried to console them: "Don't worry, I'm not sleeping with him." They slowly came around. And even managed to see some potential good in the situation. "It's not safe for three girls to be living alone in an apartment," they decided. Jonathan turned out to be a great apartmentmate. And, although we all considered ourselves feminists, there were definitely some times when we were glad that he was there. Like the morning I took a shower and couldn't turn the hot water off. I called the landlord. "I'll come over tomorrow and look at it," he told me. I looked at the clouds of steam pouring out of the bathroom and wondered how much all that hot water was going to raise our utility bill. In the midst of every- <strong>Cornell</strong> Alumni News 26
thing, Jonathan woke up and turned off the hot water valve outside the shower. Then there was the night that we blew a fuse. The entire apartment was black. We lit a candle and called the landlord. "I'll be over soon to fix it." he told us. We sat out in the hallway doing our homework. Two hours later he still had not arrived. We called again. 'The fuse box is downstairs in the basement of the restaurant," he told us. We went down to the restaurant. The owner of it told us that we needed a key to get into the basement. And that our landlord had the key. We called our landlord, who told us that the restaurant owner had the key. "I wonder if we could just break the lock off," I said rhetorically to Jonathan as we contemplated the padlocked basement door. He walked away, in disgust I thought. But a few minutes later he reappeared with a screwdriver and pried the lock off the door Ḃecause we didn't know him before we all moved in together, Shannon and I had worried that we might not get along with Jonathan. But it turned out that the instigator of most of the problems in the apartment was Valerie. She was from a wealthy family, where she apparently never had to clean up after herself. When there were dishes piled in the sink, or books all over the living room floor, it was a safe guess that Valerie had been there. Another tell-tale sign was the trail of popcorn kernels she left behind her. She was addicted to hot-airpopped popcorn. There was popcorn in our kitchen, in our living room, and in our bathroom. And even if we kept | our bedroom doors shut, there were some wayward kernels that drifted in under the door. I t was an interesting year. Good practice in diplomacy: "Valerie, when you get a chance, could you please wash up your dishes?" (We're out of clean plates, silverware, cups, and pots); "Jonathan, would you mind turning your stereo down a little bit?" (My books are falling off my bookshelves from the vibrations); and backing up pleasant little reminders that New York Telephone had called and said they were planning to disconnect our phone if we didn't pay our bill by the end of the week. It was also good culinary practice. Each of us did our own food shopping and cooking. After three months of tuna fish, salad, and eggs, I had bored myself into learning how to cook some more daring dishes, like chicken. Sophomore year, our landlord was benignly negligent. But the next year, living with a new group of people on College Avenue, I learned about nasty landlords. We were living in a house where everyone had been away for the fall semester. It was a nice house, and we wanted to re-rent it for senior year. But before we signed the lease, we wanted to know how much the first heating bill was going to be. No problem, our landlord, a dean in the Engineering college, told us. Let me know by March 1. In February, his wife called us up to inform • Jill Major, Robert Nichols '87, and the ubiquitous plaid in a College Avenue apartment must be what makes it possible for Collegetown landlords to get away with what they do. But since we still had to look for a place to live the next year, it just didn't seem worth the hassle to pursue the issue. So we didn't. Now as a senior, I feel older and wiser. My housing experience has definitely paid off: I live in a house with four friends on Eddy Street. Our landlord is very nice. We have a job chart on our refrigerator that tells whose turn it is to clean the kitchen, the bathroom, and the living room each week. Since there are five people, each of us has a weeknight that we cook dinner for everyone. And since we only have to cook once a week, and since everyone has to eat it, we always try to make it something fairly edible. I think if I had lived in a dormitory for my four years here, my college exus that the house had been leased for the following year. But your husband told us we had until March to decide, we protested. Sorry, she said. We went to the housing office to find out what our legal rights were. We learned that if we wanted to take the matter to court, we probably had a case. But it didn't mean that we would be able to get the house for the next year, since the lease had already been signed. We felt guilty that we were another example of the student apathy that perience would have been a very different one. Living off campus has taught me many things, including some useful practical skills. Although I still don't know what I will be doing after graduation, at least I am not afraid that I won't know how to find a place to live. Next month: ON-CAMPUS HOUSING. What's available for freshmen and lucky upperdass students, transfers, and graduate students. May 1987 27
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Page 3 and 4: The BMW Mi was test-driven wh the c
Page 5 and 6: Consistency. Northeastern people ar
Page 7 and 8: Summer and Fall Study Tours for 198
Page 9 and 10: 92; reports on faculty, 90; student
Page 11 and 12: The Cornell Aituaiii News owned and
Page 13 and 14: I know you are not soliciting pros
Page 15 and 16: THE FACULTY Presidents Fail Fatal f
Page 17 and 18: NEWS A Historic Meeting forΊhistee
Page 19 and 20: NEWS A Midfielder Bob Cummings '88
Page 21 and 22: of the City Urban renewal to planni
Page 23 and 24: which were built on land acquired b
Page 25 and 26: good if it isn't beautiful." In 196
Page 27: 'Dear Mom, I'm living with a guy, b
Page 31 and 32: that I couldn't see why they should
Page 33 and 34: grow. And so I began to look at tha
Page 35 and 36: CLASS NOTES ^J| • • • The ine
Page 37 and 38: CLASS NOTES are carrying on researc
Page 39 and 40: CLASS NOTES learn of the deaths of
Page 41 and 42: CLASS NOTES Early this year I saw M
Page 43 and 44: CLASS a second son to their daughte
Page 45 and 46: CLASS NOTES Bryan who is a freshman
Page 47 and 48: CLASS NOTES clearly. Have three gro

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