Emma Daniel
News Editor
Someone browsing Airbnb to find cheap digs for the game this Saturday might see the entry “Troy Gameday Getaway” and envision a quaint house not too far from the stadium — but for $20 a night, for a short time, a dorm room on Troy’s campus was offered as a room for rent.
One student, who asked to remain anonymous, saw an opportunity and posted their dorm room on the rental site.
The entry was quickly removed after the buzz began, but that didn’t stop people from talking about it.
“It was a pretty innocent joke between friends,” said the student who posted the ad. “I honestly forgot we made it until it got a notification.
“No one could have stayed there … it was a one-off joke.”
It might be a good thing it was a joke, or he could have faced disciplinary action.
“No one asked permission, and it’s not something we would permit,” said Sara Jo Burks, the assistant director of housing and residence life. “You can’t sublet a room to someone who’s not a student.”
Herbert Reeves, dean of student services, agreed that renting a dorm room out, especially to a nonstudent, would be against regulations because dorms at public universities are technically state property.
“You can’t make a profit off of subleasing state property,” Reeves said.
“I’m not sure how many people, especially adults, would want to stay in a college dormitory, unless they were coming for a game day type thing and couldn’t find absolutely any other place to stay.”
Although he said he thought it “odd,” he could understand any concern people might have if students were allowed to rent out rooms.
“I would be a little concerned that there’s someone renting his or her room out to people who have no connection to the university,” Reeves said. “They could be leasing that room out to anybody, and we have no recourse over people they sublease the rooms out to.”
Although some universities and students are able to make money renting out rooms, Troy University’s visitation guidelines prohibit guests who are not students, requiring an ID card to visit another student.
Josh Whitehorn, a senior sports management major from Texarkana, Texas, lives in the student’s building, and he said the ad ended up starting a discussion about entrepreneurial dorm ventures.
“We decided a fast food drive-through would be the best business to run out of a dorm,” Whitehorn said.