Dazed, Confused and Living Large (Published 2008)

MOST college students encounter, in one class or another, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s assertion that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

Some New York University students, however, have found themselves living the dictum. They are residents of the university’s newest dormitory, a 21-story building on Third Avenue at 23rd Street called Gramercy Green. The apartment building, which was originally constructed as luxury condominiums but was acquired by the university because it needed new dorm space, offers living quarters that some students regard with a mix of awe and guilt.

“Young students like us don’t need this quality of living or, at the very least, we don’t need it provided by our college,” Damon Beres, a sophomore from Chicago, wrote in a recent issue of The Washington Square News, the school’s daily paper.

He also addressed larger issues.

“Gramercy represents N.Y.U.’s latest exercise in gratuitous land-grabbing,” Mr. Beres wrote, “a $275 million splurge to transfer a luxury apartment building from the people of Manhattan to the far needier students of this poverty-ridden institution.”

In response to Mr. Beres’s comments, John Beckman, a university spokesman, said: “The amenities that the building has are not choices that the university made. They were choices that the developer made as he was constructing the building for a different purpose. In the 12 years I have been here, this is the first time I can recall students accusing the university of doing something that’s too nice for them.”

Gramercy Green’s luxuries include stainless steel appliances, hardwood floors, dishwashers and granite countertops, in addition to kitchens and private bathrooms.

According to Lyle Frank, Community Board 6’s chairman, some residents are also worried about under-age drinking at nearby bars and its potential negative effect on the neighborhood.

But generally, reviews have been favorable. Toni Carlina, the board’s district manger, said that university officials met with the board to ensure what she called “a very smooth transition” of the building’s 925 students into the neighborhood.

Still, with Socratic introspection, some students are not content to let the luxury life go unexamined.

On a recent evening, Mr. Beres, wearing a yellow T-shirt and a black stud in each ear, visited a 12th-floor suite — complete with floor-to-ceiling windows that offer stunning views of the city — where friends of his shared their responses to their quarters.

“I nearly dropped dead,” Alison Leung, a 19-year-old biochemistry major, said of her first visit to the room. “I was blown away.”

Nicco Reggente, a visitor from another dorm, added: “I don’t know what dorm in America could rival it.”

Mr. Beres shook his head. “I almost feel guilty,” he said as his friends pretended to fawn over the touch-screen microwave. “It feels like too much for me.”