Where would you rather live? An apartment with a kitchen and your own room or a residence hall with a roommate and a resident assistant pounding on your door telling you to be quiet.

Every year, students apply to live in either the Horn or Markham Apartments. This year, 28 groups of four applied and all but seven groups received the news they waited a month to find out – that they were in.

Obviously there is not enough space in the apartments for everyone who wants in. This is not a bad problem to have. The fact that Baker has on-campus housing that students are excited to get invited to live in is great.

Grade point average and credit hours are considered while choosing which applicants make the cut. Students must also disclose any special needs, such as food allergies, although these needs do not count toward the point total added up to determine if a group will live in an apartment.

Maybe it should.

I’m sure most people who apply are deserving of a room, and students should be rewarded for hard work in school and giving three or four years of their lives to the institution, but some students need the luxuries of the apartments more than others.

If, in the case of a student with a food allergy who was denied an apartment room, having a full kitchen would allow him/her to eat the certain foods they need to more conveniently, that student deserves the room.

Are the student’s needs really being considered if the needs are not counted into the final point total?

Surely we could let a person with a grade point average a few points less than a competing student get the benefit of the doubt and be accepted when that room would make everyday life easier for him/her versus living in a residence hall.