Current and incoming students can expect an upgrade when they step foot in UTEP Housing and Residence Life. While the original furniture has plenty of memories, it was extremely worn out by the students who have come and lived in the dorms throughout the years. Now students can create new memories with new, updated furniture. 

One of the goals of Raymond Gordon, Executive Director of Housing and Residence Life, has been to enhance the quality of student housing through plans to bring in modern furniture. 

“We want housing to be somewhere that’s safe first and foremost, but also comfortable, and some of the furniture that we had in the residential properties up until two weeks ago, was on the older side and didn’t look inviting and wasn’t clean and homey feeling,” Gordon said. 

 The new furniture included full-sized couches with a love seat, living room tables, two side tables and twin xl mattresses. The furniture was purchased from Foliot Furniture, a national residential company. 

“The new furniture definitely puts that new position forward where you know students want to sit on it, students want to relax and enjoy their time with one another and build a community within their apartment,” said Gordon. 

The new chic furniture may bring more students into housing. 

“I think it will have a positive impact on our occupancy for the fall and the spring,” Gordon said. “The older furniture wasn’t something that many students wanted to sit down and get comfortable on, so I think that the new furniture that we do have right now puts forth a more positive and clean feeling that we want people to have.” 

Gyneth Gonzalez, a junior majoring in Forensic Science, is one of the many students living at Miner Village. 

“I’ve been looking forward to the change of furniture since I came to live here because the couches were pretty old, and these new ones, I like them, the color, I like neutral, they’re comfy,” Gonzalez said. “Regarding the mattress for the bed, at first I thought it was smaller than the first one which it is, but I’ve been sleeping pretty well honestly.” 

Gordon says he hopes to bring in more enhancements for different housing properties in the near future. 

“I have a very long list of things that I’m looking at to have taken care of,” Gordon said. “The change out of flooring, I’m looking at carpeting and flooring in some of the apartments at Miner Village, the furniture was the big thing. We will be looking at painting the inside of apartments and also the exterior of specifically Miner Village. Miner Heights isn’t painted, and Miner Canyon is still okay, but we did the roofing over in Miner Village and that was a large undertaking, we’re still in the process of taking care of that.” 

These newer projects are future based and are in planning, to be taken care of over the next few years. 

“We’re just really excited about the work we did this summer; it’s taken a very long time. We started the process for this back in September last year, so it’s taken almost a year. It took three weeks for the furniture to get installed and it will take about two months for all the roofing to get done,” Gordon said. 

These recent changes are bringing back a comfortable space for students to enjoy while living on campus. If residents have any concerns or questions about these changes or about living in student housing, you may contact [email protected] or call (915) 747-5352. More information about the properties may be found at https://www.utep.edu/student-affairs/housing/. 

 Avery Escamilla-Wendell is the staff reporter and may be reached at [email protected] or on Instagram @by_avery_escamilla