Aidan McGinty and Corrado Buzzerio sprawled themselves across each of the seven beds in Maloney Hall’s fourth floor lobby on Thursday, testing out mattress options as part of a new initiative by the Office of Residential Life (ResLife).
“I was pretty excited because the mattresses right now aren’t very good, and I thought it was great that Boston College was trying to step up their game,” said McGinty, MCAS ’27.
ResLife held a mattress testing event on Wednesday and Thursday this week for students to test seven different mattress options and rank their preferences using a Google Form.
Kevin Rielly, assistant director of facilities, said ResLife decided it was time to upgrade the current mattresses after decades of using the same model.
“We’ve had the same model mattress for maybe 20 years—maybe a little bit more—and figured it was time to change and upgrade,” Rielly said.
According to Rielly, many students abandon their mattress toppers at the end of the school year, which accumulates waste.
“There’s new mattress technologies and different construction methods that we could kind of incorporate, as well as kind of reduce the number of mattress toppers we have on campus, because at the end of move-out, we’re left with mountains of them.”
Upon entering the event, students scanned a QR code to access an evaluation form, which asked them to test the mattresses and rank all seven from best to worst. Students were also given the opportunity to provide individual feedback for each mattress.
“Each year, Residential Life evaluates and then replaces mattresses throughout all 32 buildings,” the form read. “As we look towards the upcoming year, we would like to gather student feedback on the mattresses we provide in the residence halls.”
The form also asked students if any of the mattress options would disincline them from using a mattress topper in the future.
“I sat on [mattress] number five and it was immediately the most uncomfortable one,” said Buzzerio, MCAS ’27. “It’s the one that we currently have, is what I would say.”
While Buzzerio appreciated that ResLife was looking for student feedback, he said the event should have been better advertised.
“I think it’s awesome that they’re getting student feedback from it,” Buzzerio said. “I wish it was more advertised because I feel like this would be a big thing. Like, if someone just went to O’Neill with a megaphone and was like, ‘Yo, come down here to lie on some beds,’ that would be pretty cool.”
Buzzerio said the setup of the event made him feel like he was in a mattress store.
“It’s kind of like a Mattress Firm in here because I feel like there’s never a lot of people in Mattress Firm, but you know that they sell mattresses,” Buzzerio said.
Both McGinty and Buzzerio said they hope ResLife will take the student feedback seriously.
“The Google Form feels pretty legit,” McGinty said. “But yeah, I hope they take our opinions into account.”
According to Rielly, he has seen more positive feedback from the mattress testing than expected, and ResLife is going to incorporate the form’s results into their future decisions.
“We’re gonna take this [feedback] and go and add it to our decision,” Rielly said.
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