Many in Cal State Monterey Bay’s rising sophomore class were surprised by a change in their new living space when they arrived back on campus this semester.
Originally in the North Quad Suites (Vineyard and Pinnacles), double rooms had two separate beds. The bedspaces within the second-year housing complex were on different sides of the room providing each resident with their own space. At the start of the 2026-2027 academic year, CSUMB implemented bunk beds instead.
There was no announcement of the change within this year’s Housing License, and some occupants say they weren’t informed any other way.
Humanities and Communications sophomore and resident of Vineyard, Bryce Minturn, was surprised by this arrangement because the photo in the housing portal led them to believe it would have been two single beds in a double.
A similar experience has occurred with another Vineyard resident, Florian VanSickle, an HCOM sophomore.
Before move-in, not by an official announcement, but by his boyfriend, who had moved in earlier, VanSickle was informed of the bunk bed situation. “Finding out that there were bunk beds was a little unexpected. I’m in a double right now, and I’ve made it work, but it’s definitely not what I preferred.”
Despite resident statements, it has recently been explained, “On our housing selection webpage, CSUMB noted that all of North Quad residences would have bunk beds. In our campus-wide communication about Settle in the Kelp and in the housing updates, we also mentioned bunk beds,” said a university spokesperson.
After living in this configuration for a couple days now, Minturn shared there are some minor inconveniences they had to work around. They hope for future residents to be aware of a few things: the metal, slippery ladder, the warmer temperatures on the top bunk and less accessibility to their belongings.
“In my dorm last year, my desk was right next to my bed so I was able to put all of my stuff on that. But now I had to get something that hangs on my bed to be able to have my stuff close to me because I’m on the top bunk,” said Minturn.
After being told by a Resident Assistant that moving the bunk bed would be against community standards due to safety risks, Minturn has become accustomed to the setup, even if it is not ideal.
Likewise, Vansickle shares these feelings with Minturn, “I’m making it work so I don’t feel the need to do that [to unbunk] anyway, but it was a frustrating thing to find out that that’s just not a thing we can change.”
A university spokesperson said, “Changes to dorm configurations this fall are based on CSU safety concerns about beds being located under windows,” they said. “In order to meet these system-wide requirements, North Quad double spaces had to be bunked.”
While the current state of configuration has been clarified, many incoming sophomores have some feelings of dissatisfaction.
“I wish there would have been more explicit communication beforehand. I understand if maybe there was a policy or something that made them [CSUMB] have to change it at the last minute, but I think that students should have been directly informed about it as soon as they knew that this would be implemented,” said Minturn.