
Aug 28, 2008 10:36 am US/Eastern
UMass Students Make N.H. Hotel Their New Home
NASHUA, N.H. (WBZ) ―
As college students start moving back to school, hundreds of UMass Lowell students will be making their new home at the Radisson Hotel in Nashua, N.H.
UMass Lowell has run out of housing for their students, so they rented out 130 rooms on three floors of the hotel to accommodate the overflow.
The hotel is located about 10 miles from the UMass Lowell campus, but Nicole Gordon, a student at the school, does not seem to mind too much. "In a dorm room, you have a small community you have to build. You work with one another in order to get to know everyone. We're going to be doing the same thing here."
In all, 240 students will be staying at the Radisson. They will have to bring their own ironing board and will not have fresh and fluffy hotel towels given to them, but they will have access to the hotel's indoor pool, steam room and Jacuzzi. Housekeeping will even come in once a week and change the linens on the bed.
"We're going to have a great community," said resident assistant Brian Seymour as he loaded his belonging onto a bellhop trolley. "We're going to feel like we're in a regular college dorm."
The number of UMass Lowell's incoming freshmen is up 20 percent. The school's says the hotel is a temporary solution as they work to build more housing of the Lowell campus.
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