The secret life of (residence hall) pets

Though the Housing Contract prohibits pets in the residence halls, students still sneak pets into their rooms.

Senior Cheyanne Wescott said she managed to keep a small albino hedgehog in her dorm for an entire semester while she was a first-year.

“Her name was Luna Lovegood,” she said. “I got her second semester freshman year and took her home during spring break. I actually bought her while I was in Econ 101.”

Wescott said caring for Luna was surprisingly easy, though there was one catch.

“They’re nocturnal, and you can train them not to be but that takes time that I didn’t have,” she said. “So, she would be running around her pen and on her wheel every night.”

Associate Director of Housing and Residential Education Rick Bradley said the rules are in place to prevent problems that could arise with students having pets in their dorms, though there are exceptions for service and comfort animals. 

“With the number of students here who have allergies, that would be the complication,” he said. “You get one year with a student who has a pet, and then a student who follows behind them with an allergy and that’s a problem right there.”

Bradley said the housing department has to deal with pets in residence halls every semester.

“Usually a community director will meet with the student and ask them to remove the pet immediately,” he said. “There’s no fine or anything. If there’s damage to the facility, then certainly they have to pay for repairs, but generally, and it’s up to the community director, but there could be some kind of sanction.”

Two students who wish to remain anonymous to avoid housing sanctions are currently keeping a dwarf hamster in their dorm. She’s also named Luna.

“When we got her she was white, so we named her after the moon,” one of the students said. “I’m not going to lie — it was a pretty impulsive decision. I got a tattoo like two days before Luna.”

One of them said their hamster is adorable, but keeps them up at night.

“She’s crazy, she’ll just do the weirdest things,” one of them said. “It’ll be like two in the morning and she’ll just be climbing on the top of her cage.”

Another student who wishes to be anonymous keeps two hermit crabs in her dorm.

“When I first got them, I didn’t have the best cage to put them in, so at night they would go up and scratch the sides and wake me up,” she said. “But I finally got them a better cage and I haven’t had that problem since.”

She said Felix and Sheldon, the hermit crabs, are existing quite peacefully, and have been very easy pets to care for.

“They really don’t bother anyone. I think it would be a good idea for us to be able to have smaller pets, especially because they don’t take up much room,” she said.

Another student who wishes to remain anonymous is keeping not one, but two, hamsters in her dorm.

“They’re mostly nocturnal, so they run around their wheels at night,” she said. “You have to clean their cages out weekly, and you feed them every other day depending on how much they’re eating. I order my food online through Amazon and it gets delivered to the dorm.”

She said keeping the hamsters has so far been really straightforward, and she's gotten hamster care down to a science.

“One of them is like really fat and the other one is pretty small,” she said. “I’ll be honest, they’re both pretty cute.”

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