<p>When do people move in to the apartments such as Cardinel Gardens? Does everyone move in on move in day?</p>
<p>Does anyone know if the bedrooms are smaller or larger than the rooms in Birnkrant? Is there nothing in the kitchen at all when you move in as far as utensils, pans etc?</p>
<p>thanks</p>
<p>Everyone is able to move in on the same day, regardless of where you live in Trojan Housing. If you are a freshman, you will want to move in on that first day. If not, move in whenever during that weekend. There will be nothing in the kitchen except for a sink, fridge, and oven with burners. No utensils or pans. Not even a microwave. Those are only in housing options that don’t have kitchens.</p>
<p>What day IS move-in day?</p>
<p>August 20th</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>10 chars</p>
<p>Can anyone elaborate on the closets in Cardinal Gardens? I’ve noticed that in one room it’s just the one sliding door closet (and I noticed one dresser inside of it). Is there another dresser for that room? Or is it just one dresser and that one closet? And for the other room, it looks like a walk-in closet… any dressers for that one?</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>Each of the two rooms in Carndinal Gardens has two dressers. One of the rooms in my daughter’s apt. had a long sliding door closet, the other room had a walk-in closet. She was able to fit her dresser in the walk-in and her roommate put her dresser under the window in order to have a place to put a lamp.</p>
<p>Two things you will need to look into for Cardinal Gardens: a microwave (as mentioned above) and you will need a couple lamps as there is no overhead lighting which makes the rooms a bit dingy. (That struck us as really strange!) We got a floor lamp for the living room and they had a big lamp and study lamps for the BR. Unlike Marks Tower (my daughter’s freshman dorm) you also have to provide your own trashcans. </p>
<p>You will want to find out what your roommates are bringing and hopefully with everyone chipping in you’ll have what you need.</p>
<p>the closets no longer include the sliding doors, those have been removed to give a little extra “closet space” - so not much of a difference just less “private” since you see everything in the closet</p>
<p>Now that you mention it, I don’t think the girls in the other room, with the long closet, did have closet doors. It didn’t really “register” as I didn’t spend much time in that room other than to see how they’d decorated it. I do remember seeing things in the closet. 
So that’s a good point for people to be aware of. </p>
<p>The walk-in closet does have a door. It also has an overhead light.</p>
<p>Sliding doors in that style of closet are more of a pain than anything else. My USC apartment also had them, and I took them down and stored them in the other room within a day of moving in. </p>
<p>They are annoying because the track has to be completely clear (within an inch or so of the dresser) in order for the door to pass by. So you can’t have anything overflowing out of the closet. It also means only one person can have access to their side of the closet at one time, and there is a lot of noise and commotion to get the doors from one side to the other.</p>
<p>^I can only imagine how hectic that can be in the mornings if you and your roommate are both up and trying to get to class at the same time haha</p>
<p>Thanks PBK Mom. That was very helpful!</p>
<p>Another question about the rooms: I noticed that the 2 bedrooms are different sizes (probably to make up for the closet difference). Is it that noticeable when you’re actually in the rooms? Or can you not even tell one is about 20 sq feet larger?</p>
<p>The size difference is noticeable. It’s kind of a tradeoff, you can have the larger room with the exposed “closet wall,” or the smaller room with a lot of your stuff hidden away in the walk-in. </p>
<p>My daughter was in the smaller room and it worked out fine. Since you’re in an apartment which also has a living room/kitchen/bath, it’s so much more room to spread out than the dorm room, so it felt like more space to her even in the smaller room.</p>
<p>An important caution re Cardinal Gardens: last year my daughter and her roommates had a serious problem with mail theft. Their mailbox wasn’t secure; you could sort of pull the whole front of that section of mailboxes forward and get in to the boxes. Apparently the bottom line was that the mailbox locks and security are the responsibility of the USPS, and she could not get the USPS to do anything about it despite multiple contacts, on the phone, in person at the station, and in person with the carrier. She also asked for help many times from the CSC and they were unable to get anything done. She finally gave up in utter frustration.</p>
<p>We ended up having to stop sending her mail partway through first semester, which was a real pain. It would be an even bigger pain for someone from out of state.</p>
<p>The most important thing that went missing was a birthday gift from a relative, which we didn’t realize until a couple months later. She just discovered that at the end of the schoolyear her acceptance letter for a minor in the Cinema School never got to her (it was sent to Cardinal Gardens), and they had to mail her another copy at home. After 3 different Netflix discs went missing last fall, we had the account shifted back to our home address (we’d been planning to let her use it during the schoolyear; she pays half the fee). Netflix was really nice about it and they also pressured the P.O., to no avail. Her roommates had letters, magazines, and Blockbuster DVDs go missing.</p>
<p>Another problem was since the boxes are outside and handled by the USPS and not students (as in dorms like Marks Tower), package slips were not put in the mailboxes but taped to the boxes. She saw some “pranksters” rip off the slips and trash them on one occasion. We had to make sure she knew she was getting boxes (so much for surprises) as a couple times she never received the notice. She had to go looking in the package room if she knew she was supposed to get something. Her roommates had the same problem, i.e., not receiving a notice of a textbook arriving from B&N, which it turned out had been sitting in the package room for over a week when it was found. The staff was not proactive about renotifying people when packages were “sitting” in the room for a while.</p>
<p>Otherwise she really liked C.G. and is happy to be going back next year! She is very glad to have USC housing and is just hoping for a better mailbox number! :)</p>
<p>I’m not posting this to be a downer, just to make you aware that if they have not fixed the Cardinal Gardens mailboxes there is a problem with at least some of them, so treat with caution. (Maybe someone higher up at USC will read this and look into it…we can hope!!) I also hope they go to email notification of packages, something my daughter suggested to the CSC. USC already uses email for things like cancelled classes and traffic and crime alerts so it’s kind of surprising they don’t use it for package notices, since it’s much more secure that way.</p>
<p>Is the mail security problem just at Cardinal Gardens? My son is going to be living at Fluor. Is there a mail security problem there as well? I am sorry to hear about this problem.</p>
<p>“Is the mail security problem just at Cardinal Gardens? My son is going to be living at Fluor. Is there a mail security problem there as well? I am sorry to hear about this problem.”</p>
<p>My daughter had only one problem at Marks Tower, with one piece of mail not arriving. That could have been for any reason so it didn’t worry us. The mail for dorms which are within the actual campus confines seem to be all indoors and serviced by the school. (At least, this is true of the “Freshman” dorms near McCarthy Quad; I’m not positive about the other end of the campus.) The only drawback is the mail goes through the campus mail system so occasionally things like packages take an extra day for delivery.</p>
<p>Cardinal Gardens is across the street from campus and its outdoor mailboxes are serviced directly by the USPS. I’m not sure about the other “off campus” USC housing but suspect it may be the same in some if not all cases.</p>
<p>The issue at Cardinal Gardens is the only mail problem we’ve heard about in my daughter’s 2 years at USC. She thought about trying to move higher up the “chain” to get someone with more authority at USC to pressure the USPS about the problem but was just too busy, in the end, to keep expending the energy on it, as were her roommates.</p>
<p>This is the first time I was made aware of the mail problem, I’ll be sure to bring it up to the Residential Education office when the school year starts up. In the end it is up to the USPS if they want to take action or not.</p>
<p>“I’ll be sure to bring it up to the Residential Education office when the school year starts up. In the end it is up to the USPS if they want to take action or not.”</p>
<p>Thanks! The more people who “talk it up” the better. USPS has unfortunately played passing the buck till now…</p>
<p>This definitely needs to be fixed, but residential education has nothing to do with it. I’m an RA, and even I lost a letter or two over the year. Housing (a separate department), deals with the mail for the dorms on campus like New/North and South Area (Marks Tower, Pardee, Radisson, Marks Hall, Trojan Hall). I don’t know anything about other buildings, except Troy/Troy East, which is also handled by housing. The customer service center for your building would be the first place to go, but then definitely try to work your way up through them- that will be the most effective manner!</p>