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Music major Teddy Vossler commandeered the grand piano in the great hall right after moving into his new dorm, a luxury cruise ship docked in St. Mary’s harbour.
“The reason I came to this college was so I could be on the water. It feels more like going on vacation than going to school,” said Vossler.
He and 240 other St. Mary’s College students in Maryland are literally living on the water after rampant mould closed two dormitories.
After spending $20,000 a night to bunk students in three hotels far from the waterfront campus, the school seized on an alumnus’s idea to charter the Sea Voyager on its way back from a summer bunking construction workers in Deception Bay, Quebec, for EBC-IGLU, s.e.n.c.,Toronto,
Once the ship was cleared by the U.S. Coast Guard, students started moving in this week.
“This is awesome,” student Katie Dreyer posted on Facebook. “Nobody else can say they spent a semester on a cruise ship.”
The combined effects of Hurricane Irene and coastal Maryland’s natural dampness infected two dorms with mould in piping, insulation and ceiling tiles.
Cleanup, grounds vice-president Chip Jackson told the Star, will cost $1 million.
“Some students felt the effects” of the mould before the dorms were evacuated, he said, but for “the vast majority there were no issues. It was a precautionary measure.”
The water is integral to St. Mary’s identity, said Geehan. The historic city is surrounded on two sides by water and the college can boast three sailing Olympians as alumni. Students can use their ID cards to rent kayaks.
A skeleton crew has remained on the 286-foot, six-deck Sea Voyager to maintain the docked ship, clean cabins and do laundry. One lounge has been turned into a “quiet study area” and students can use the ship’s gym, but the bars are closed.
“I thought I was dreaming,” student Caitlin Whitesis told a local TV station. “My dorm is a cruise ship.”
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