The student news site of Marquette University

Marquette Wire

The student news site of Marquette University

Marquette Wire

The student news site of Marquette University

Marquette Wire

MU residence halls fail to rake in any “Dormy Awards”

Site called Dormsplash.com listed its top college dorms, and no MU ones, including Cobeen Hall, made this list. Photo by Emily Waller / [email protected]

The results of DormSplash.com’s first annual “Dormy Awards” are in — yet Marquette’s residence halls are as absent as most of its students on a Friday or Saturday night.

None of the university’s nine residence halls made the list in any of the six categories, which included dorms with the hottest residents or best parties.

DormSplash.com is an offshoot of CampusSplash.com, a website offering news on college life and admissions. DormSplash.com is a more specialized website, allowing students to review their residence halls, based on categories including location, quality of RA staff, cleanliness and quiet study environment.

The “Dormy Awards” were released with the launch of the website in early March and are based on student reviews of residence halls, said Allen Gannett, a representative of DormSplash.com.

Gannett said more than 7,100 student reviews were used to compile the lists of the 14 best dorms, worst dorms, biggest party dorms, dorms with the hottest residents and schools with the best RAs in the country.

Although none of Marquette’s residence halls made the lists, some regional schools in the Midwest did. Sellery Hall on the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s campus was a top “party dorm,” as was Bobb-McCulloch Hall at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.

In contrast, three residence halls at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign made the list of “worst dorms in the country.”

One of U of I’s dorms, Garner Hall, topped the list of unfavorable places to live on campus. A freshman-only dorm, it is an old building with extremely small rooms and no air conditioning, said Ben Valle, a freshman at U of I.

Valle also expanded on a possible reason why another U of I dorm, Forbes Hall, made the same list.

“Last semester, a homeless man got into the building and hid out in the girls’ community bathroom,” Valle said.

Even though Marquette’s own McCormick Hall is known for its beer can-like shape, small rooms and social scene, it was not granted a place on any of the lists. Neither was Straz Tower nor McCabe Hall, widely considered by students to be the poshest places to live on campus.

Straz Tower, with its sizeable, air-conditioned rooms and in-house Rec Plex, is a popular housing pick for students. Although it is not centrally located on campus, its residents enjoy various amenities that could put it on the “best dorms” list.

“I love how close to the city we are — I feel like the main part of campus tends to feel like its own little bubble, but Straz is right on the edge of downtown, which makes Milwaukee feel just a little more accessible,” said Rachel Morrison, a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences and Straz resident.

Perhaps if “view from dorm window” was a category on DormSplash.com’s rating system, Straz Tower would have fared better in the awards results.

“One of my absolute favorite parts of living in Straz is the view — regardless of which side of the building you’re on, it’s incredible,” Morrison said. “It’s especially beautiful at night when everything is lit up!”

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