Your freshman experience at Georgetown depends heavily on which of the four freshman dorms you find yourself in, and, along with your school within the University, which dorm you’re living in will dominate much of the banal conversations you’ll have during NSO. The freshmen dorms are where you’ll likely make your first friends and first start to feel at home on the Hilltop.

But it’s important to remember that, while your dorm determines where you end up living, it doesn’t determine how you end up living. Things you can control, like who your friends are, what groups you join, and what you study, have a much larger impact on how your first year at Georgetown goes than the fact that you’re doomed to live in an assigned room for that entire year.

Each dorm has its own ups and downs, but, as far as what the actual rooms are like, the dorms are not all that different. Every freshman shares his or her room with one roommate and has a reasonable amount of space, along with a twin-size bed, desk, and closet area. Some dorms offer some special perks like sinks or bathrooms, but, for the most part, the rooms are all very similar.

Don’t expect to find out where you’ll be living for a while, though. Housing guards your room assignments till “early” August .

New South

Georgetown’s largest freshmen dorm is also the one that can be described as the most “typical” college dorm. New South has very long, branching hallways and floors packed with loads of freshmen. Its large size and population lends itself to being the most raucous of the dorms. Denizens of “Zoo South” should expect loud Friday and Saturday (and sometimes Thursday) nights. Fortunately, New South is very close to Lauinger Library, so it’s not difficult to escape any noise.

Read about the rest of the dorms after the jump!

Back in March, college-geared website Campus Splash released rankings of various college dorms across the country, grouping them into categories like “best,” “worst,” and “best-looking.” And in this set of rankings—for which we’re sure the methodology was careful and highly scientific—Georgetown came out with the honor of two “dormies”: Darnall as third on the “worst” list, and the Village A apartment complex as number six on “Best Party Dorm.”

Well, even though that only happened six months ago, Campus Splash has inexplicably released their next round of rankings, and would you look at that, we’re on there again! This time, though, they apparently realized that Village A can’t really be considered a “dorm,” so our party ranking went down a tad—our sole representative is now New South at a modest #10.

The website’s little blurb about the freshman party spot refers to it as “Zoo South,” a nickname we’re pretty sure the website made up itself. The grammatically frustrating descriptions also adds that the residence hall is “not so clean (but what can we expect from a party dorm?)”

Unfortunately, Campus Splash didn’t put up another “worst” list, so we can’t tell if Darnall is still making the cut. But it appears that having a freshman hall with rooms big enough for beer pong wasn’t enough to land us the accolade of their top list—Georgetown is nowhere to be found on their “Best 15 Dorms” list.

During the next two weeks, security cameras will be installed in the entrances and exits of University residence halls.

“Cameras will be aimed at entrances and exits and not at student rooms,” reads an email from Housing Services that was sent to residents on Wednesday evening.

11:45 a.m. Friday update:

Rachel Pugh, director of media relations, issued the following statement to Vox:

Georgetown is installing additional security cameras on campus as part of its ongoing efforts to enhance safety and security. As you know, we are always assessing ways to enhance the safety and security of our campus community and implement measures that reflect best practices in the security industry. Georgetown personnel use security cameras as one of many measures to deter and detect criminal activity on campus. In some cases we are able to create efficiencies in time and construction costs by having work for this project be done at the same time as the work necessary to install wireless in residence halls. Security cameras are located throughout campus in a variety of locations which are identified as most relevant for crime prevention purposes. As you can imagine, it would not be prudent to discuss specific locations, as that would undermine our crime prevention and detection efforts. Students should be assured, however, that cameras are not directed at private residence hall living spaces and are purposefully installed to in ways that are consistent with students’ reasonable expectations of privacy. We appreciate your support of these efforts to keep our community safe.

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DormSplash.com, a new website that allows students to review their dorms, recently published its first ever Dormy Awards.

The Village A apartment complex took sixth place in the best party dorm category, while first place went to the Briscoe-Shoemaker dorm at the University of Indiana-Bloomington.

Although top “honors” went to Garner Hall at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Georgetown’s Darnall Hall placed third in the worst dorm rankings.

The rankings, however, might be a bit questionable.

Only 7,100 reviews have been submitted for the website. The rankings of certain schools might be due to the site offering a “massive cupcake party” for the school with the most reviews.

First Kober Cogan and now Darnall? Gosh, everybody disappears for the summer and Georgetown suddenly starts to fall to pieces.

Signs posted inside Darnall Hall reveal that the University recently began an “asbestos abatement project.” The project, which involves removing both floor tiles and mastic putty, is slated to run through the end of the month.

But, there’s good news. (Aside from the inevitable Darnall: The Sitcom storyline about asbestos.) The asbestos removal is part of a larger renovation project in the dormitory. Incoming freshmen lucky enough to live in Darnall next Fall will have the pleasure of … new carpeting!

“This summer, [the University is] working to remove and replace carpet in Darnall,” University spokesperson Andy Pino wrote in an e-mail. “As is the case with many buildings from this era, some of the floor tiles underneath the carpet contain asbestos.”

The University hired both a professional, EPA-certified contractor to remove the asbestos-laden floor tiles, and an environmental consulting firm to oversee the process.

And for those of you who are now terrified to walk past, in, or near Darnall—fret no longer. According to the sign posted inside the building, the University also hired an “industrial hygiene contractor” to “analyze air samples during and after asbestos abatement.”

But then again, we’re pretty frightened every time we walk inside Darnall.

After the jump, we’ve got a scan of the notice posted inside Darnall.

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Save these

Whether or not it turns out that Georgetown could have prevented Sunday night’s fire in New South, it’ll probably irk at least a few residents to learn that Georgetown just made U.S. News & World Report’s list of “10 Schools With Pricey Dorms.”

It’s never too early to invest in your dream house!

If dorm living’s got you down and you’ve heard the horror stories about local landlords, the Washington Times has a new solution for you: go buy a house (or, more precisely, go get your parents to buy one for you).

The Times ran a whole feature story on the new trend of parents buying homes for their college-age kids to live in while they’re at school.  While buying a house seems like a drastic step, the article explains that with the rent and dorm prices rising and the housing market in shambles, buying a house and selling it off or renting it out to other students after graduation often makes financial sense.

While the phenomenon is most widespread in the Midwest where real estate is the cheapest, but it’s also gaining ground here in D.C.  The article features one real estate agent who sells as many as eight houses per year to Georgetown and GW students.  The piece also profiles recent Georgetown Law grad Jim Pyle, whose mother bought him a house on Capitol Hill which they sold for about $200,000 more than they paid.

Dear LXR, this actually shouldn’t be your energy use model

You may not be aware of it since, as the Voice‘s Editorial Board pointed out in this week’s issue, the University hasn’t done a great job of publicizing it, but Georgetown is in the midst of Switch It Off, an inter-dorm energy use reduction competition.

Each residence hall is now competing against each other to see which can reduce its energy consumption by the highest percentage as compared to how much energy was used in the residence hall last year. There will be a prize awarded to the dorm that reduces its energy the most, but the University hasn’t yet said what exactly that will be.

Village A is currently in the lead, with a reduction in energy use of 13.1 percent from the previous school year. Six of the nine dorms have a net decrease in energy use over last year, but three have actally increased their energy use.  LXR is the big offender, with a whopping energy use increase of 18.1 percent.

Here are the full rankings:

1. Village A:  -13.1%
2. Village C:  -8.4%
3. SWQ:  -7.6%
4. New South:  -6.1%
5. Harbin:  -3.0%
6. Copley:  -0.2%
7. Henle:  +0.6%
8. Darnall:  +4.1%
9. LXR:  +18.1%

Does she rock her style or what?

Yesterday afternoon, students on five different dorm floors emerged from their rooms to find that somebody had placed baskets of Garnier Fructis products in front of every door and set up bountiful swag displays in their bathrooms. It caused a real stir. When news got around that there was free stuff in the New South boys’ bathroom, for example, stampeding ensued. (The life of a freshman is nasty, brutish, and short.)

Reports are that Harbin got gypped. Lucky for Harbinites, though, the Garnier Fructis crew is throwing a veritable block party on their patio as we speak. It’s part of their “Sing in the Shower” campaign. According to tour manager Dan Humphrey, GF will visit 12 campuses and one karaoke fiend will win $500 and a Garnier gift basket. You can win, he said, if you “rock your style,” which I guess meant they’re looking for stage personality, not vocal talent.

Freshmen ears will be ringing and the Harbin Patio will be up to 5x smoother, 5x stronger, and shinier for weeks.

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After seeing my room’s decor, my roommate’s mother called me a minimalist. My side featured a bare wall and two pictures of my family. Her daughter’s side of the room, in contrast, was covered with photos and food.

My decorating sense was shown up even more when I started visiting some of the other rooms on my floor. Check out these awesome rooms:

An Artist’s Room

This is Lena’s room. She’s an art major and she covered her side of the room with her artwork. Some people are so talented.

She also made two posters for her friends to leave stylized messages.

Nice!

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