Charles R. Drew Hall
Grade: D

Drew Hall is Howard University's Dormitory where most incoming male freshman get dumped--excuse me, placed. The building is well over 40 years old, making it one of the oldest dormitories on campus. My disclaimer before I begin is that I am a former student with an admitted grudge against the school and its administration for the way they handled (or didn't handle) my situation, but I insist that the LONG opinion that I express here was the general opinion shared with all of my fellow Drew inhabitants in the 1999-2000 school year.

In late August 1999, I arrived in Washington, DC, eager to start out on my college adventures. As we drove down Georgia Ave. towards the school, I anticipated what I had come to expect from most every other school that I had visited: clean rooms, sturdy furniture, decent facilities and appealing amenities. Hopefully I would be nicely surprised by my living situation for the upcoming school year.

Surprised I was. Nicely surprised, I was not.

We pulled over next to a housing project on Gresham Place. I asked my father why we were stopping here before reaching Drew Hall. He laughed and pointed at the lettering on the side of the building--Charles R. Drew Hall Dormitory. I was aghast... it was a classic housing project-style C-shaped 5-story building, courtyard in the middle, little scraggly bushes everywhere... after administration gave up on figuring out why I was omitted from the room list after being assigned a single in the summer, they placed me on the 5th floor. At the time they were not putting anyone on 5 because the bathrooms were not complete. They claimed that I would be in room 500 until Monday (Of course, I moved out of room 500 in May) so I should just go down to one of the other floors and use the bathrooms there. Upon seeing my room, I was thankfully relieved, yet shaking my head in disbelief at the same time.

Before I go any further, let me explain the layout of the floors. The building is shaped like a C, so all of the floors naturally follow suit. The lobby on the first floor leads to a room with vending machines (total amount snatched by broken machines, in dollars: $7.40), a student lounge (when we arrived, we had Satellite TV connection but the TV was stolen during the summer; then we got a TV but the satellite box was stolen during Homecoming... oh yeah, there are pool tables, but no cues), a computer lab (to service about 250 students, there exist 15 computers total--half are Macs, a quarter are not working, and two are old Pentiums with tiny hard drives and slow speeds, leaving one system I ever used, and that one couldn't print to the network printer), and an elevator (read: deathtrap--it dates back to the building's erection in 1950s, rarely works, and takes weeks to get antiquated parts when broken; I was trapped twice). Floors 2 thru 5 have the rooms. the rooms are arranged with the singles in the "middle" of the C, and the doubles at the two "ends". The laundry room is in the basement (there is no laundry card refill machine in Drew Hall), as well as a marginal weight room (no freeweights).

But I digress; my room was not particularly small, especially since my room was right next to the elevator and stairwell and thus had slightly unique dimensions. Suffice it to say that I had seen smaller rooms in other schools. My room faced the courtyard, so I had a good view of the football field and the street out front, Gresham Place. Lighting was adequate with 3 florescent tube fixtures. However, that was where any niceties ended. Can you believe that Howard University, a so-called "World-Class Research Institution", does not have Ethernet connections in their dorm rooms? This is the ONLY school that I have ever heard of having such a crucial installation missing. (On a side note, the school offers a free DIALUP connection, but urges users to log on for no more than one hour at a time... is this a joke?) Continuing in its downward spiral of lacking features, the rooms do not have Cable TV, and most rooms are incapable of getting a good antenna signal unless you were near the roof like me. Carpeting is nonexistant; I had linoleum tiling like the hallway's that was coated in a perpetual grit, making flip-flops a must (socks got too dirty too quickly). The tiles obviously dated back to Drew's 1950s construction judging from the unorthodox 9-inch squares. The room had no air conditioning system, just a ceiling fan that did not get turned off until mid-November because of the excessive heat. That first August week was almost unbearable--with temperatures averaging in the 90s, I was consistently peeling myself off the rock-hard mattress to take multiple showers.

Maybe "shower" isn't the proper term, as we didn't get shower heads until November (I'll get to that later), but for lack of a better term, I'll let it slide.

Appalled by the conditions I was forced to endure, I joined the Dorm Council and became the 5th floor representative. Instantly we pushed to get all of the broken things fixed. I am happy to say that thanks to our pressure on the administration, much got done. I was shocked to see all of the people who had it much worse than me: broken/nonexistant closet doors/furniture/light fixtures, nonfunctional ceiling fans, leaky windows, etc. Bathrooms on all floors were missing showerheads. Need I speak of the building's infestation?

Ultimately, I survived, thanks to a great RA (Olu Burrell) and some lifelong friends. The one good thing that did come out of Drew's tenement-style community is the close-knit group of residents. Because we shared equal strife, it definitely brought us all closer together. That's a big part of what college is all about--making those long-lasting connections.

A few miscellaneous notes:

- As a single-sex freshman dorm, not only is there a curfew for signed-in guests (Midnight on weeknights, 2AM on weekends), but there is an unwritten stigma attached to being a Drew resident, perpetuated my some female students. It is only really evident in the first few weeks of school, when upperclassmen tell freshman girls to avoid us like the Plague. Soon it all disintegrates, but a stubborn few stay unnecessarily judgmental.

- Drew is located at the far end of the main campus on Gresham Place, which is off of Georgia Ave's 2600 block in NW DC. The campus is completely open and public; ANYONE can enter the grounds without ID. Right next door are rowhouses inhabited by DC locals, who don't particularly take too well to out-of-towners. DO NOT WALK BY YOURSELF if possible, even if you are going to Howard China at the corner of Gresham and Georgia; I could get into the armed robbery horror stories, but this Epinion is long enough as-is. For Epinions members from Boston, think Dudley Station in Roxbury... there may be worse streets you've walked, but its no frolic in the park, especially if you look lost.

- Become friendly with the Drew maintenance workers. They don't like having to clean up after a bunch of rowdy teenagers; would you? They are people too, so make your mother proud and say hello.

- Always lock your room door. Once again, stories exist, but enough has been said; you have been warned.

That should about cover it. I must concede that living in Drew Hall for those months was without a doubt, at the risk of sounding cliche, a character-building experience. I am simply concerned for the well-being of future residents who will undoubtedly have to go through what I did. Will I miss Drew Hall after it inevitably gets torn down? Sure, but more in the way that one misses an old dead-end job because of the dynamic co-workers, and not because of the 40-hour grind. From what I understand, incoming freshmen have no say as to what dorm they are assigned, but hopefully this will let some guys know just what they are getting into.

Go Bison, indeed.



Recommended: No