Amy Jayasuriya ’26
Copy Editor
As students pack their suitcases in eager anticipation of returning to Scripps after a three-month-long break, a certain group of students never left, choosing to spend their summer on-campus working as researchers, events assistants, and interns. A specific group of interns working at Denison Library, however, found that their overall experience was tainted by their difficulties in securing housing arrangements both on and off-campus over the summer.
Scripps did not offer summer housing this year, and housing on other 5C campuses was not open to Scripps students. Most of the Denison interns lived at the Claremont Collegiate Apartments (CCA) for the duration of their internships. Despite securing housing there, the interns expressed dissatisfaction with CCA’s communication and overall organization.
Grace Gitau ’25, an archival intern at Denison, recounted how CCA initially refused to allow her roommate to move into their assigned apartment. “I assumed that by the time [my roommate] would arrive, that she would be moving into our [shared] room,” Gitau said. “But then when she picked up the keys, it was for a different room. When we told [CCA] that, they said someone else has been assigned to our room. They didn’t let us know when we signed up that it wasn’t possible for us to live together.”
After days of communicating with CCA, Gitau and her roommate were finally able to move into their apartment together. This didn’t come without any difficulties, however, as Gitau often had to communicate with CCA about the mix-up while she was working.
“It was a lot of going back and forth with CCA,” Gitau said. “I’d have to leave work early to get to the office in time to talk to them. Then I had to call them while I was at work and ask them if they were going to let us in. It was just a lot of fuss over what seems like nothing.”
Housing mix-ups weren’t the only inconvenience of living at CCA. Helen Poggi ’25, the recipient of the Rogers Needlework Internship at Denison, emphasized the inconvenience of walking back from Denison during the scorching summer heat in Claremont.
Both Poggi and Gitau expressed that rather than deal with the difficulties of living at CCA, they would have much preferred to live on-campus in the dorms.
When asked about the possibility of interns living on campus, another Denison intern who requested to remain anonymous recalled that Denison librarian Jennifer Martinez-Wormser’s requests for Denison to subsidize on-campus housing for interns were denied by the Scripps administration.
“What Res Life told me was that anyone who has any sort of a direct connection with the college or is in a position where [they are] serving the college directly gets on-campus housing,” the anonymous intern said. “So if you are a RC or [a student] working with an events coordination group, you got [subsidized] Scripps housing.”
The Denison interns were not granted on-campus housing and were separated from other student workers living on-campus.
“It would’ve been better if we could have stayed on campus, because then we also could have had community with other Scripps students who were staying on campus,” Gitau said.
While the Scripps administration refused to allow the Denison interns on-campus housing throughout their internship, they also refused to allow any of the summer interns staying on campus to remain on campus until August move-in.
Another summer intern at Denison, who has requested to remain anonymous, lived at CCA during June and July. The student, who had to leave campus for a family event during the first week of classes, decided to continue working at Denison through August. However, since CCA housing wasn’t extended through August, they had to find another place to live.
“I initially asked [Res Life] if I could move into my [on-campus] housing early after CCA ended,” the anonymous student said. “I wanted to move my stuff in before I had to leave, which would’ve only been a difference of a few days before returning students move-in. But they weren’t willing to let me do any of that.”
After being denied the option to move into their housing on the 21st, only three days before returning student move in, the anonymous student found housing in a private Airbnb room near campus. However, their experience there was not also not ideal.
“[The Airbnb] is a house shared with essentially strangers, which makes me a little bit uncomfortable,” the student said. “The kitchen is not very usable, so I haven’t been able to make my own food and I’m spending a lot more on buying pre-made food than I was spending on groceries.”
The anonymous student expressed appreciation for their work at Denison and the other interns, only listing their ongoing issues with housing as the one disappointment in what otherwise would have been a positive experience.
“I’ve moved around like three times this summer,” the student said. “And then I’ll have to move in and out for school. So it’s just a situation that has created a lot of unnecessary stress.”
Photo Courtesy: Frances Walton ’26
