Bard CollegeCampus Housing Summary

The dorms on campus are just as eclectic as the students they house. Looking around, you’ll quickly notice Bard’s signature lack of architectural consistency. While some on-campus houses look like sprawling 18th-century manors, others appear to be dilapidated pre-war bomb shelters. Many of the newer dorms (like the Village series, for instance) sport modern conveniences and eco-friendly devices like auto-shut-off lights and geothermal heating. Older dorms, on the other hand, lack even basic amenities, like air conditioning. On average, newer and nicer dorms seem to produce more satisfied tenants, or at least better smelling ones, than the less remarkable dorms, but they can have the sterile aura of a hotel. The worst dorms are guaranteed to have the best school spirit, as these disgruntled students tend to rally behind their shabby but eccentric buildings. Also, all but one on-campus house is coed, so inter-gender mixing is rampant in both bathrooms and bedrooms.

Each year, just before graduation, Bard holds its annual ‘room draw’ in the Stevenson gymnasium to determine where returning students will live next fall. Each Bardian is assigned a random raffle number, and when your number is called, it’s your turn to pick a pad. Furthermore, come fall, Bard continues to admit more students than it can feasibly accommodate, which inevitably leads to severe housing shortages. Mendicant and clearly a little unhappy, these students often end up in makeshift trailers or else packed into cramped ad hoc triples—not where you expect to be after shelling out thousands of bucks for a supposedly decent place to stay. Still, just about any room can be comfortably livable with some tactful decorating strategies.