Cramped Quarters for Returning Stanford Students

Stanford University's housing officials had a cozy surprise waiting for a handful of undergrads who were returning from studying abroad: a dingy basement room with three other displaced roommates, the Stanford Daily reports.

[One student] found himself occupying a study room in the basement that had been converted into a one-room quad. Pipes hanging from the ceiling prevented [him] and his three roommates from lofting their beds. The heating system would not turn off, he said, leaving the room stuffy within the first few minutes. Several hundred law books lined the walls, taking up valuable floor space. Cobwebs and dead spiders hung near a rusty pipe that one occupant found so appalling he pulled his bed away from the wall.

The school says that this semester's housing crunch is actually less severe than last year's—but that's probably little comfort to students waked up by janitors trying to access a storage closet and concerned by the lack of any privacy whatsoever. In short, according to one student, this is "just absurd."