Thanks, Pratt.

This morning, I received an email from the Pratt GradComD Office. It read:

Dear Incoming Student,

For those of you who will be moving to NYC to attend the Graduate Communications Design program in Fall 2009, we thought this article might be helpful as you navigate the rental market looking for a place to live. Please be aware of scams, especially on Craig's List.

Then it linked to that same article from last week's New York Times real estate section.

Wow. Thanks a lot, Pratt. Thanks for the heads-up. Thanks for rejecting my first application for housing, telling me not to worry because you could totally find additional housing in a different dorm, and then saying "oh nevermind" and rejecting my application for housing again. Thanks for having absolutely zero resources for those of us who weren't given graduate housing - no helpful information about the neighborhood, no message boards or ways of communicating with other students, nothing whatsoever about off-campus housing on your super over-designed and therefore un-navigable university website. Just an email warning us that there are scammers out there looking to fuck with broke-ass grad students who were just dropped on their faces by the Office of Residential Life and Housing.

Thanks.