Dear readers,

    First and foremost, Happy Chinese New Year! I wish you a healthy, joyful and prosperous Year of the Horse!

    I recently heard about a major residence hall renovation on campus. Starting next school year, the dorm will be closed down for a year-long period of infrastructure and facility improvements. This means that hundreds of students will need to relocate to another housing space. Where is the university going to find new, vacant buildings to accommodate several hundred students in this densely populated city where living space is already beyond saturated? The answer is: it isn’t going to establish a whole new residence hall. Instead, it has announced available dorm rooms within several hotels in mid-town Manhattan. As exciting and uncommon as the idea is, it is apparently not the first time the university has had students living in hotel dorms.

    Of course, many upperclassmen choose to rent apartments in the city, Brooklyn or other nearby boroughs in lieu of dorms. Having your own apartment brings an abundance of conveniences, such as being able to host guests freely (campus dorms have guest policies in place). However, dorms do bring about a stronger sense of community on campus, as you live with fellow peers and participate in hall activities. One recent program was the Penny Wars, hosted annually. It’s a fundraising game, in which each floor competes by donating pennies in a jar; with each one-cent penny counting as 1 point. Here’s the catch — any coin other than pennies (i.e. nickels, dimes, quarters — 5, 10, 25 cents, respectively) deducts points corresponding to the value of the coins (minus 5, 10 or 25 points). Many are unaware of this rule and drop in spare change in dimes and quarters, hurting the team score. Other “creative” individuals decide to sabotage other groups by donating coins other than pennies to other teams’ jars. Regardless of the resulting strategy, the rules of the game are consistent with the goal of raising money, and the game brings many opportunities for teamwork and bonding to the table.

    Sincerely,

    Bingyin