With the rent for residence hall rooms increasing significantly from last year, some students have expressed outrage at the hefty price of a one-term stay at the College.
The student bill for the summer -- sent at the end of last term -- showed a 5.8 percent increase over last year's rates, according to Emily Farnham, fiscal officer for the Office of Residential Life.
In past years, the increase has usually hovered at around 4.5 percent, she said.
"I thought it was really ridiculously expensive for a term," said a female student who wished to remain anonymous. She is living in a two room double and is paying almost $1,600.
"It's not worth it," she added.
Several other students, after discovering their room charges, said they would have liked to live off-campus, but were discouraged by td e $300 fine for withdrawing from a room contract.
"I would have lived off campus if it wasn't for that deposit," Lauren Fontein '02 said, adding that an apartment or house with such amenities as kitchens and private bathrooms are sometimes priced similarly to simple rooms at a residence hall.
The average rent for a room rose from $1,411 per term to $1,493 per term.
However, due to the fact that only Massachusetts Row, the newly renovated Gold Coast cluster and the River Apartments are available, summer term students may be experiencing the higher range of rent prices.
Last year's rents ranged from $1,340 to $1,550.
The range for this year is $1,440 to $1,640.
"[The rent] is certainly fitting in with inflation and economic factors," Dean of Residential Life Martin Redman said. "It's not putting us in a place where we're making money."
According to Redman, factors such as the price of heating oil, janitorial salary increases, general inflation, the local housing market and the steadily rising price of toilet paper caused the increases.
However, he cited the biggest factor for the above-average increase as the payment for expanded cable services, which will cost around $100,000 a year, Redman said.
Redman said although the money collected for room rent last year paid for the start-up fee of the cable deal, which was around $450,000, there will always be an ongoing annual cost for cable programming.
The second largest reason for the increase is the repayment of interest for loans taken out to build McCulloch Hall, the new residence hall in the East Wheelock cluster, he said.
The Summer term room rent is included in the budget plan for the next fiscal year, which starts on July 1. New rents are calculated according to the budgetary needs of the time between then and June 2001.
The rent is set at the same level for the remainder of the school year.
"[Rent increases] are reasonable," Farnham said. "It would be great if we didn't have to, but the reality is that we see increases in the basic operating costs."