Grant Rogers, manufacturing engineering technology senior from Jeanerette, and Eric Quebedeaux, geometrics sophomore from Arnaudville, consider themselves to have the preeminent domicile of the entire student body. They share a cramped, makeshift, two-bedroom apartment located above the greenhouse on campus.Residents of the greenhouse work on campus in lieu of paying rent. Rogers and Quebedeaux’s tasks include watering plants, landscaping and painting lines on the football field.

Tic Toc, a greenhouse employee for the last 10 years, says Rogers and Quebedeaux are hard workers and never back down from tasks.

“These guys are good,” Tic Toc says. “If I ask them to trim or whatever, they do it. Not like the people who used to live here.”

When they are not working, Tic Toc sometimes joins the duo in the apartment. Rogers and Quebedeaux play guitar while Tic Toc belts out old country tunes and sometimes a yodel or two.

To Rogers’ knowledge, Nicholls students have been living in the greenhouse for at least the past 30 years. He suspects the poster hanging above his bed has been there since the 1970’s.

Greenhouse residents like to keep information about how to become the next lucky inhabitants under wraps.

“Connections,” Rogers says. “You have to know people; that’s all.”

The apartment, filled with second-hand furniture, guitars, unwashed dishes and the smell of 20-something males, is hard to distinguish from most other college apartments. That is, until one peers out the kitchen window where a university-sized greenhouse fills one’s view.

The greenhouse duo must abide by rules handed down by the administration.

“It is kinda like an oversized dorm room,” Rogers says. “No girls. No uninvited guests. No Alcohol. No drugs. No Yankees. You know, the usual.”

Rogers says he used to live in a nicer apartment off-campus but prefers the convenience of living on University property.

“As you can see, this is not the White House,” Rogers says, sitting on one of two mismatched couches. “But it is easy living. That is what we live here. This is the best place I have lived yet.”

Rogers and Quebedeaux list few expenses, no unexpected guests, a place to go between classes and a reserved parking spot as a couple of the other perks of living above the greenhouse.

“I hate it when people park in my reserved parking spot,” Rogers says sarcastically.

The greenhouse has recently welcomed a third roommate.

“He is the best pet I have ever had,” Rogers says, pointing to stuffed coyote perched above the television. “He never talks back and always sits when I tell him to.”

Rogers says they took in the coyote after getting rid of their last pet, a tarantula that had been dead for sometime.

Although their residence is shabby to say the least, some recent renovations have improved living conditions. The roof has been recently renovated, and new lighting has been added.

“We laid this floor down ourselves,” Rogers says proudly. “It took about 72 hours.”

The only neighbors greenhouse residents have to deal with are Stephen Hulbert and his family, and they say the University president causes few problems.

“Sometimes we see him walking his dog,” Rogers says. “He usually stops and talks to us if we are outside. We like to be neighborly.”

The greenhouse is a little-known Nicholls institution. Hidden in plain sight, students pass by it every day while walking to class, oblivious that Rogers and Quebedeaux, and many before them, have called it home.