'90S Dorms Feature Weight Rooms, Saunas -- UW, Other Schools Entice With Luxuries To Keep Students In The Residence Halls

With its spectacular view of Husky Stadium, Mount Rainier and the Cascades, Matt McColl's 11th-floor dorm room in the University of Washington's McMahon Hall is a real-estate agent's dream.

In his studio-sized space, McColl - a 21-year-old UW junior from Bellingham - lounges in his loft and strums on his electric guitars. His fax machine hums alongside his stereo deck. If he's hungry, he can drop into the dining room from 7 a.m. to midnight every day. He rents a VCR from the front desk every week and offers movie night to those on his hall.

Next year, HBO will be available. The UW is installing cable so students can get any premium channel for about $3 a month.

As apartment complexes continue to beckon, colleges like the UW must entice students with a smorgasbord of luxuries calculated to make them stay in school dormitories.

"We have to be competitive so we offer a lot more amenities," said Mike Segawa, the UW's assistant director of residential life, a division with a $28 million annual budget (from room and board and conference fees) that oversees about 3,700 students in approximately 2,000 dorm rooms.

As landlord, the UW offers its tenants computer laboratories, big-screen television lounges and arts-and-crafts rooms in seven residential halls. There are weight rooms, saunas and sun decks. Tanks filled with tangerine- and lemon-colored fish bubble warmly in communal living rooms.

And to accommodate today's electronic generation, colleges are rewiring dormitories for the assortment of color televisions, stereos, microwaves, refrigerators, video games, computers, cordless phones and answering machines students typically add to their nests.

At the UW, officials are focusing on family housing and apartment-style complexes rather than dormitories, which now are almost all coed. Attempts are made to make the residences more home-like. Students, for example, no longer are forbidden to take food out of the dining rooms.

Old-fashioned hall still popular

Still, the most old-fashioned dormitory at the UW, Hansee Hall, is also the university's most popular. It has a waiting list of students who prefer wooden furniture, study halls with overstuffed chairs and strict rules that require residents to lower their stereos during certain hours so their neighbors can study.

At McMahon Hall, freshmen Thomas Gray and Miller Lewis share a typical room, the size of a prison cell, for about $480 a month each - food included.

Gray said he's not sure whether he will move to a more spacious pad next year. But, he admits, the view outside his sixth-floor room offers a natural incentive to stay.

"I know none of my friends are looking at the Cascades or Mount Rainier," Gray said.

WSU also upgrading its dorms

The UW is not alone in its efforts to keep up with private landlords. At Washington State University, 4,500 students live in 23 dormitory halls, where some laundromats have been converted to kitchenettes. University officials in Pullman are designating dorms for certain majors. For example, engineering students have their own residential hall.

WSU interior designer Lezlie Kelly said students will soon be able to hook up their dorm-room computers into the school's mainframe for messages and class announcements.

At Seattle University, school officials rewired two of its three halls so students can work on their computers without overloading the wiring. Furniture has been updated so it can be moved and cable is planned in the near future.

"Students want something other than just two beds, two desks and two closets," said Judy Sharpe, director of SU housing, who conducts a survey every other year to find out what students want. "It has to be more personal."

At SU, students can splash their own colors on their room walls so long as they aren't too outrageous.

But for all the efforts to make residential halls seem more like home, McColl at the UW said dorms still have one giant advantage.

"Mom's not around to tell me to clean my room," he said.