Two students living in Days Hotel, a PLNU housing option

Though Residential Life and Housing was able to work out the housing issue at the end of last year, PLNU still currently has two registered students living at the Days Hotel San Diego on Hotel Circle

At the beginning of summer, 24 students were planning on residing at the Days Hotel, which is 8 miles away from PLNU, for the school year. However, Residential Life and Housing (Res Life) was able to accommodate them in residential housing.

“We were able to accommodate all students moving on to the main campus,” said Jeff Bolster, dean of students. “However, we do have two non-traditional aged students living [at the Days Hotel].”

Since PLNU doesn’t allow students over the age of 23 to live on campus, Robert Wyzykowski, 35, and Michael Bux, 32, took PLNU up on their offer to house them at the Days Inn. These students share a room that is covered by their room charge, which is consistent with students’ on-campus room and board.

This is Wyzykowski’s third semester at PLNU. Last year, he lived in Colony but was told that he could not live there this semester due to PLNU’s commitment to providing housing for students under 24.

Wyzykowski said that every place has its advantages and disadvantages and Days Hotel is no exception.

“We have queen-sized beds, A/C, personal bathrooms, a kitchen and housekeeping cleans our room once a week,” he said. “But at the same time, it’s a little tight since the rooms were meant for short-term housing. Not to mention the location makes you feel a little disconnected.”

Another tough part about living at the hotel is the difficult commute.

“My roommate and I have different schedules so we don’t really carpool and it usually takes about 25 minutes to get to school since we have to fight morning traffic,” said Wyzykowski.

Wyzykowski and Bux don’t interact with the hotel staff often since they can enter their room from outside without having to go through the lobby. The hotel is very timely on repairs if the students need it.

Wyzykowski said it would have been nice to have the 24 students living in the Days Hotel.

“I would have enjoyed having more PLNU students at the hotel and the better community that would have come with it,” he said.

Both Bux and Wyzykowski served in the military previously. Wyzykowski, who was in the army from 1998 to 2000, is no stranger to sleeping in unique living situations.

“I was involved in the infantry branch and at one point we were stationed in Bosnia and we lived in huts with eight or nine other people,” said Wyzykowski.

Every spring semester, Admissions and Residential Life and Housing (Res Life) discuss projections for the number of students who will live on campus for the upcoming semester. Res Life then makes rough housing plans according to the number of projected students. The number of students projected last spring doubled this year, forcing Res Life to accept more off-campus requests and adjust on-campus housing.

According to Molly Petersen, assistant director of student housing, the number of juniors and seniors who wanted to stay on campus increased. Petersen attributes this to PLNU’s great community life.

“Community life at PLNU has increased and that’s desirable for a lot of students,” she said.

Because of this, Res Life sought out extra off-campus living space. Through PLNU’s partnership with Bartell’s Hotels, they were able to acquire rooms at Days Inn off the 8 freeway in Mission Valley.

Petersen explained that the hotel rooms are rented by PLNU just like a guest would rent them. “We were able to get the hotel to charge us what we charge students for a room charge,” she said. “This is lower than what the hotel would normally charge a guest, so they gave us a deal for sure.”

After filling every bed on campus, Res Life started a wait list for students who didn’t want to live at the hotel. Res Life sorted out the extra students by reconfiguring the residence halls.

“There ended up being less freshman than projected but also, five to 10 students switched from off-campus to on-campus housing,” said Petersen. “We ended up moving the sophomore transfers from Goodwin to Nease where we had extra room from the freshmen who decided not to attend.”

This left about 25 open spots in Goodwin where Res Life was able to place all of the outstanding students who wanted to live on-campus.