FRANK PINC/Staff Photographer Moving in: Dominican freshman Teal Cyko contemplates how she will arrange and design her dorm room on move-in day a few weeks ago. Students tend to find creative ways to make use of the small space.


JASON GEIL/Staff Photographer Roomy feel: Cyko stacked the two beds and placed the desks opposite each other to make more room. She uses the end of the top bed as a mini closet, hanging shoes and garments.

Dominican University’s dormitories serve as a home away from home for many students, so the temporary residents do their best to make life as comfortable as possible.

The Power and Centennial dorms on Dominican’s campus in River Forest house over 170 students. Power, which was named after Mother Emily Power, is the oldest dorm. It was built in the 1920s. There are offices on the first floor and the dorm consists of mostly single units, with a few doubles and three triples.

The Centennial dorm, which is the newest on campus, opened in January of 2004.

"We broke ground in the Centennial year of Dominican University," said Robert Babcock, director of residence life.

The Centennial dorm consists of four floors, which include eight suites and double clusters. A double cluster, according to Babcock, is a section of two double rooms that share a common bathroom. The suites have four bedrooms, two bathrooms and a kitchenette.

A dorm staff, which consists of students, resides on each floor to help residents adjust to living at the university. There are also full-time resident hall directors who have apartments in the dorms.

Shannon Seegers, who is an RA in the Power dorm, has a double unit and has made herself feel at home by sectioning the room into "sub rooms." Seegers has a kitchen section, where she keeps her food, fridge and cooking gear. Her bathroom section is the sink where she keeps all her products and cleaning supplies.

"Organizing my room like that makes it feel much more homey and almost like a mini- house that I’m living in," said Seegers, who also furnishes her room with items she found at second-hand shops, including her desk, ottoman and rocking chair.

Amy Kenat, another resident of Power, lives in a single unit and insists, "It’s really the people who make it comfortable."

Hailing from Michigan, Kenat spends a lot of time in her dorm room. "Many people who live a little closer to Dominican usually can go home on the weekends. I don’t have that option."

Kenat’s dorm room is small, but she decorates it with lots of pictures of friends from home and at Dominican. The walls are covered with photos of Chicago and her hometown. Kenat uses a bright comforter to give the room more color.

Freshman Teal Cyko, who lives in Coughlin Hall, also matched up colors in her room.

"I brought a poster from home of the computer game, Spore. The poster is really colorful," she said. "I also focused my room around the color lime green, because that is the color of my sheets. It worked out well because my roommate has dark colored bedding and mine is light, so they coordinate.

"My room is still a work in progress," added Cyko. "I want to put up my digital photo frame and I’m looking forward to the poster sale on campus this week. It feels more at home now that I have colorful decorations on the wall."

Another resident on campus, Amy Preston, has lived in the Centennial dorm for four years with the same roommate. Preston said her and her roommate work together to find ways to make their room more comfortable.

"We like a lot of floor space because we like having people over and need a lot of storage space for all our stuff," she said.

Preston and her roommate have decorated their room with a lot of color. They have a pink and purple rug and tie-dye curtains, and the walls are covered with posters and pictures.

"If we start the year off with white space on the walls, by the end of the year we have new pictures or drawings or inside jokes of some kind to fill the space," said Preston.

Many of her wall decorations include pictures from her travels, high school and college, White Sox posters and even some of her graphic design projects.

Rick Boyte, who resides in a suite in the Centennial dorm, agrees that posters and pictures are a great way to decorate dorm room walls.

"It makes it more homey and livable," he said.

Another great way to feel at home, students say, is to leave the door open. According to Boyte, having the door open informs other students that you welcome guests.

"The social aspect is really important," he said. "Through that, you have a better support system [at Dominican]."

A new extension of the Power dorm, called Mazzuchelli Hall, opened last year. Cody Koepke currently lives in this particular hall and uses the influences of music to decorate his room. Koepke has band posters up on his walls and keeps his guitar in his room for late nights of writing songs and playing. He also has up a large collage of friends from his hometown.

"I try to make it a chill, clean place to live," said Koepke. "You also have to have a good source of movies. And you have to make the room friend accessible."

The main thing that Koepke and Boyte agree on is to put oneself out there socially when living in the dorms. Getting involved in clubs and groups is a great way to meet people and make friends and it helps to feel more comfortable in the Dominican community.

"Where they [residents] live becomes their home and the people they live with become their pseudo-family," said Babcock.

Lisa Wieczorek is a senior at Dominican University.

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