Martel, despite no longer being the newest of Rice’s eleven colleges, still has the best rooms (We’re actually the fourth youngest building, following the brand new McMurtry and Duncan and the opening of new Wiess in 2003). Martel has approximately 230 beds available for students, plus two Resident Associate (RA) apartments, and an apartment for visiting faculty. Most rooms at Martel are “suite-style,” meaning that a number of rooms (between 2 and 6) share a common room and bathroom. All rooms in the Colleges are furnished with the necessities by Rice Housing & Dining (listed below). Every room at Martel also has its own bathroom, generally with two sinks and a shower, though it varies depending on the type of room.
There are six different types of rooms at Martel (including the rare ones of which there are only one or two). Keep reading for a brief description of Quads and Hexes, the two most common kinds of room at Martel (though we also have a scant number of independent doubles and singles). In general, our freshmen are paired with roommates and our upperclassmen live in single rooms within larger suites.
Each spring, Room Draw takes place, an event run by the Vice President for students to choose their suite and suitemates for the upcoming year. The order a suite can be chosen is mainly based on seniority, completion of service hours, and completion of all required forms. O-Week Coordinators choose suites and roommates for new students.
In addition to the furniture provided by H&D, the Martel Floor Lords provide some other essentials that you can borrow when you need them (things like vacuums, brooms, mops, etc). Click here to learn more about Floor Lords.
Quads
Most of the rooms at Martel are quads, meaning that they have 4 Twin XL beds. There are quad doubles (which is where most freshmen live) and quad singles. (Quad doubles have two rooms with two beds each, quad singles have four rooms with one bed each.) Quads, like all rooms at Martel, share a bathroom and a common room.
Quad Suite Tour
If you would like to see a tour of our suites, watch this quick video made by our wonderful 2021 O-Week Coordinators!
Hexes
There are eleven hex rooms at Martel, each with six beds. Five of them are hex doubles (the Sallyport rooms and 106), and the other six are hex singles (the corner towers). Hexes have larger common rooms than quads and a different style of bathroom. The Sallyport hexes have glass doors leading out of their common rooms, and the corner hexes have a small hallway leading to their common room door. (Corner hex common rooms also have only one small window, as opposed to the full wall of windows most common rooms have.) The rooms in the Sallyport hexes are all approximately equal in size, while the corner hex singles vary in size.
Hex Suite Tour
If you would like to see a tour of our suites, watch this quick video made by our wonderful 2021 O-Week Coordinators!
Furniture at Martel
Martel provides – or rather, Housing & Dining – provides every student at Martel with 5 pieces of furniture: a bed (with an XL twin mattress), a desk, a chest of 3 drawers, a chair and a wardrobe. This furniture all has a birch veneer and is pretty solidly built.
Bathrooms at Martel
We’re pretty lucky at Martel: we don’t have to deal with communal bathrooms. The worst ratio you’ll ever face in bathrooms at Martel is four people using one shower, one toilet, and two sinks. Normal quads have two sinks, one shower, one toilet and two doors – a door separates the bathroom from the common room and one separates the toilet from the bathroom. Hexes have two sinks, two stall-style toilets and two showers, with one door separating the bathroom from the common room. All bathrooms have two mirrors.