Campus Carrier Unsigned Editorial
Earlier this week, students planning on living on campus next semester had to endure the stress of room selection. The difficulty therein is largely inevitable, and as fun as it may be to blame Residence Life it is probably just the nature of the beast.
However, for rising seniors, the news that they may not be allowed to live off campus may have proven frustrating. This past year, qualified seniors were allowed to live off campus. Next year only students who are married, local or at Berry for their fifth year may be allowed to live off campus.
The problem with limiting students who wish to live off campus is that the dorm life at Berry does not reflect what housing will most likely be like after graduation. Students are not prepared for the level of responsibility inherent in living alone in an apartment or house if their only housing experience has been on a dorm hall.
Though Residence Life could more clearly communicate which students may and may not live off campus, the solution is not necessarily to enable more students to live off campus. Berry is a residential campus. Rather than letting all students live off campus, on-campus housing that adequately prepares students for life after graduation should be the priority. Future dorm renovations ought to focus not just on the appearance of the dorms, but on their adequacy in promoting student responsibility.
Obviously there are dorms at Berry, for example Morton-Lemley and Friendship, in desperate need of renovation for more obvious reasons. The dust in Morton-Lemley may be severe enough to affect a student’s breathing, and the stairs there are of uneven heights and even slanted. However, addressing those issues alone does not provide an ideal on-campus situation for students.
When Berry students graduate, they are not going to live on a dorm hall with a roommate. They are going to live in an apartment or a house, likely alone, and certainly responsible for getting food, leaving on time, cleaning up after themselves, etc. Dorm-style housing with roommates, limited access to kitchens and close proximity to Resident Assistants, though space efficient and probably important for new college students, does not prepare students for that level of responsibility.
Berry is a residential college, so students should expect to live on campus for at least the majority of their time. But the housing provided for them ought to prepare students for the types of housing outside “the bubble.”