Mandatory Dorms

Factual Questions
1

I remember once when I was around junior high age I was at Yale with my grandfather… we took some sort of tour and I remember them saying that it was required that all first year students live in the residential colleges (their equivelant of dorms)…

Since then I’ve heard of many schools that require first year students to live in the dorms…

I can only assume this isn’t a set in stone rule though… right? I mean it only applies to your typical just-out-of-high school kids, right?

I mean if someone were returning to school at age 37, they wouldn’t be required to live in the dorm, would they?
Or what about the 19 year old who is already married and has a kid? What if you own your own home? I mean can they really make you move? Or what if you are only 20, and aren’t married, but have rented a house and lived there for the last two years and are well established there, and couldn’t possibly move everythign into a dorm?

Just how flexible are they?

2

The colleges I’m applying to all have special living areas for older students and married students.

I don’t know how strict they’d be. I’d bet you could apply for an exemption. Failing that, the school would probably be hard pressed to discipline you just because you declined their offer of board.

3

I think most schools have different requirements if you are over 21 or married, etc. The first year dorm rule makes sense to me, having seen lots of freshmen flip out-- go bonkers with freedom or get very very depressed to the point that the school wants a number of people to be able to have an eye on them (freshmen are usually set up with roommates for the same reason-- to have someone else who would notice if something wierd were developing).

4

Doesn’t living in a dorm with a roommate feel like… well like not really being a “grown up” yet?

5

As a freshman who was required to live in the dorms, I thought I’d offer my own perspective.

Yes, all the reasons stated above are good ones for wanting people in the dorms.

However, I really enjoy living in the dorms. When I went home for christmas, I was incredibly bored; I got so used to having people around me doing things all the time that I didn’t like to be alone.

The first year of college can be a very stressful time. It is much better to have a strong social network only a few doors away (or across the room).

6

OpalCat writes:

> Doesn’t living in a dorm with a roommate feel like…
> well like not really being a “grown up” yet?

I think it depends on what sort of family and neighborhood situation you come from. If you come from a small family where you’ve always had your own bedroom, if most of the people in your neighborhood went to college, and if many of the adults you knew as a child grew up somewhere far away, it’s possible that living in a dorm might seem rather confining. On the other hand, if you grew up in a large family where you always had to share a bedroom with several siblings, if not very many people in your neighborhood went to college, and if it was expected that most people would never move very far from where they were born (and that’s approximately the situation I grew up in), living in a dorm can seem very liberating. You have more room than you did in your crowded bedroom at home. You meet people who think going to college and moving far away from home is normal, not some weird thing that only geeks do.

7

Don’t most Universities have a seperate school for older, returning students? Here at IUP it is “The School of Continuing Education.” This doesn’t put restrictions on what classes you can take or what Major you can declare (I would hope not at least) but plays by more “Adult” Rules.

8

I work in the admissions office of a mid-size university in St. Louis, and previously worked for a small school in a small town. Residency requirements are different at most schools.

At the small town/small college I was at previously, all traditional (read: straight from HS to college) students had to live on campus or with their parents. If the students chose to live on their own, they forfeited the right to school-based financial aid. The school told students this was for their own good and b/c of a lack of decent housing in the town (pop. 1100), but the main reason was that it was waaaaay more profitable for the school to have the students on campus, paying for room and board. That school would fold in a year if it was 75% commuter (its 75% residential now).

Where I’m at now, the mid-size college in St. Louis, we have a first-year residency requirement for traditional students who don’t live in the St. Louis metro area. That makes a lot of sense to me; St. Louis is a pretty big city and having a freshman from Lick Skillet, Mississippi trying to adapt to living on their own during their freshman year could be a bit overwhelming. I should mention that while we say there is a residency requirement, if that student from Lick Skillet, MS, wants to live off-campus, we have no mechanism in place to prevent that, largely b/c we are filled to capacity every year, and if someone is willing to live off campus rather than having us rennovate a janitorial closet for them to sleep in, that’s a-ok with us.

Having been a dorm-ite myself 10 years ago, and having worked with incoming college students for the past five years, I encourage all my students to consider at least a year of on-campus living. The relationships you develop, both with your school in general and the people you live with/near in particular, are priceless. Many (but certainly not all) students who commute miss out on so much by not immersing themselves in the experience. The convenience factor is obvious, as well. And while many think the price of room and board (here, for example, its $5,400/year), think of how much mom and dad and you spend on rent, food, utilities, etc., over the course of a year. If its at all affordable, I encourage all students to at least consider it.

Wooo, my longest post ever. Time for a cigarette.

9

I work in the admissions office of a mid-size university in St. Louis, and previously worked for a small school in a small town. Residency requirements are different at most schools.

At the small town/small college I was at previously, all traditional (read: straight from HS to college) students had to live on campus or with their parents. If the students chose to live on their own, they forfeited the right to school-based financial aid. The school told students this was for their own good and b/c of a lack of decent housing in the town (pop. 1100), but the main reason was that it was waaaaay more profitable for the school to have the students on campus, paying for room and board. That school would fold in a year if it was 75% commuter (its 75% residential now).

Where I’m at now, the mid-size college in St. Louis, we have a first-year residency requirement for traditional students who don’t live in the St. Louis metro area. That makes a lot of sense to me; St. Louis is a pretty big city and having a freshman from Lick Skillet, Mississippi trying to adapt to living on their own during their freshman year could be a bit overwhelming. I should mention that while we say there is a residency requirement, if that student from Lick Skillet, MS, wants to live off-campus, we have no mechanism in place to prevent that, largely b/c we are filled to capacity every year, and if someone is willing to live off campus rather than having us rennovate a janitorial closet for them to sleep in, that’s a-ok with us.

Adult students, married students, and other people considered “independent” as far as taxes go, generally are exempt from any residency requirements, as well as people with certain medical conditions (for example, a student at the first college I worked at had an unusal diet dictated by her health, one our cafeteria could not have always provided for. She was allowed to live off-campus).

Having been a dorm-ite myself 10 years ago, and having worked with incoming college students for the past five years, I encourage all my students to consider at least a year of on-campus living. The relationships you develop, both with your school in general and the people you live with/near in particular, are priceless. Many (but certainly not all) students who commute miss out on so much by not immersing themselves in the experience. The convenience factor is obvious, as well. And while many think the price of room and board (here, for example, its $5,400/year), think of how much mom and dad and you spend on rent, food, utilities, etc., over the course of a year. If its at all affordable, I encourage all students to at least consider it.

Wooo, my longest post ever. Time for a cigarette.

10

Opal, your question brought up an interesting Hijack:

Have you heard of The Yale Five? A group of five Orthodox Jewish Yale Freshmen went to court to fight the University’s rule that they had to live in on-campus dorms because those dorms are mixed-gender.

I don’t recall the results of the case, but it sure was interesting.

I know it’s a hijack, but I feel it’s worth injecting to this thread for a number of reasons:
[list=1]
[li]You brought up a Dorm Requirement and happened to be talking about Yale,[/li][li]It gave me the opportunity to post a list in a thread you started, and[/li][li]You know![/li][/list=1]
:smiley:

11

There usually are some ways around it (example to follow). But in general, I do think that living on-campus, especially during the Freshman year is a valuable experience. If I look at my close friends from college that I’ve stayed in touch with, I met 75% of them in my freshman dorm. The other 25% & I shared some other major activity, like a team sport.

I went to William & Mary which has a pretty strong requirement of living on-campus in a freshman dorm your first year. Most continue to live on campus (voluntarily) at least through their junior year. Since a)Underclassmen are not allowed to keep cars on campus (total parking crisis) and b)Housing is impossibly difficult to find within walking distance due to the proximity and overwhelming influence of Colonial Williamsburg… well, it actually makes sense.

That said, I have a friend who got out of it. Her older brother was a Senior and her parents owned a house very close to campus, where he lived with a crowd of buddies. She was allowed to live their since she was being “supervised” by a member of her family. However, the upshot of this is that she hardly knew anyone in her year – as she made friends with her borther’s friends who graduated, leaving her practically friendless her sophomore year.

And, more recently, having broken up with my boyfriend of 5.6 years, I found myself yearning for the days when a whole floorful of people were available to drag me to dinner/movies/bands/etc. whenever I got to feeling down.

12

A friend of mine had a fun way of getting out of the dorm requirement. He made life so difficult for the university that they were happy to let him go (full refund too). He claimed to have found a strong jewish faith. and he was (in his words) ‘so kosher’ that he would not eat foods that had been improperly stored (something about meats stored in the same fridge as vegies and cheese). so rather than put in redudant cooling units they offered to let him out of the requirement.

or… there’s what happened to me. My ra (resident adviser for the uninitiated) was an openly gay man, and he came on to me. <poof> he’s not an ra any more and I’m out of the housing requirement with refunded money (and a promise of not suing).

13

The college I’m attending now doesn’t require freshman to live on campus. They do provide separate housing for continuing education students, but it’s not mandantory.

I currently live off-campus, and I really enjoy it–mainly because I get to keep my vehicle. Freshmen can’t apply for parking permits here either; however, there are three pay lots for commuters ($1/hour, max. $6/day). I haven’t had any problems making friends, and my study skills haven’t suffered any–I made the Dean’s List last semester. I really like having access to a computer and Internet connection of my own rather than relying on the University’s network, which is notoriously unreliable in the dorms. It’s also clean and quiet–something which can’t be said for most of the dorms. One in particular–which I will call “UT”–is basically nothing but a big party from Thursday to Sunday.

Still, I don’t think off-campus living is for everyone. Even though I don’t have to do any outside maintenance, it’s still a big responsibility.

14

I went to Illinois State for 3 years. When I was there, the requirements were that students who came from more than 30 miles away had to live on campus for the first 4 semesters.
If you entered as a sophomore, you had to live on campus for 2 semesters.

Re: age differences - there was a 25 and 29 year old on my floor when I was a freshman. There was also a dorm that was almost entirely “older” (usually twenties) students (there were no vacancies my freshman year, so the two older women wound up on my floor), and married-student housing.

Freshman usually didn’t get parking permits, which were ~$60/semester iirc.

I liked the dorm. Didn’t have to cook or clean for the most part, and since I lived in a “quiet lifestyle” one, it was conducive to studying. I did party on the weekends though :slight_smile:

–tygre

15

I’m extraordinarily thankful that I got to skip the dorm experience. Hell, I have a hard enough time living in an apartment on campus.

Why anyone would look back favorably on dorms is a mystery to me. The very idea of being in cramped quarters with loads of extremely loud and obnoxious people blaring equally loud and obnoxious music at all hours of the day sounds very much like my definition of Hell.

I don’t know the exact housing requirements at my college, but I do know that freshmen, if they live on campus, are not eligible for the apartments and must live in the dorms.

16

The big determiner of required dorms for underclassmen is related to the surplus of dorms. Trying to get a dorm room even as a freshman at UT, Texas A&M, or my alma mater, Baylor, is challenging. No such requirement, and Baylor is a Baptist University. Stephen F. Austin State U., where a buddy of mine went, yep. He had to complete about 50 or so hours.

I lived on campus my freshman year. I was a little nervous going off-campus my second year because I had not made many close friends the first year. It proved to be about the best thing I did. I realized I had enough aquaintances to know where the parties were on saturday. I had space to get away from it all as well.

17

I have never heard of mandatory dorms before… I’m quite shocked to hear about them. I tried to live in the dorms my first year at school but couldn’t because they were already full.

I can understand recommending that all freshman live in the dorms, but I cannot believe any university would require it. College freshman are, by and large, adults capable of making their own decisions about where to live.

18

Never heard of it before, conchita? Have you investigated this? I’m sure it’s fairly common. Certainly at every liberal arts college I’ve visited, and seems to be the norm at many major universities. As others have noted, most schools don’t expect non-traditional students to meet the requirement.

If that shocks you, I guess you’ll need smelling salts over my next paragraph: I went to a school that had a 4-year residence hall requirement. It was fine. The dorms were extraordinarily nice (they’d have to be, wouldn’t they?), and the food service was tops. We also had the right to have overnight guests of the opposite sex on weekends. The nice thing was, freshmen had access to upperclassmen–everyone was integrated. There was a lot of informal mentoring, advising, etc. By senior year, some of us were chafing for the opportunity to live in apartments, with the freedom that offered, but we understood the value of the system. There are some other benefits to it–no worries about landlords; financial aid was realistically matched to actual room/board costs; didn’t have to cook for ourselves; maintenance was prompt; no commute time; excellent security.

More cynically, you can dismiss it as an in loco parentis thing, or a revenue-generator for the school. However, I still see many advantages to it. I’ve got great memories of living in the residence halls at college. I’ve managed in the ten years since to manage renting and paying a mortgage and all of that without incident, so I don’t think I was unduly damaged by not getting that life lesson in college. :slight_smile:

19

I’m in my first year of University, and I am grateful not to have been forced to live in rez! Even the better buildings are too cramped for my taste. There is no rule about “if you come from a certain distance away…”. I’m 800km from home! My school has a particular group, called OCUS (off-campus university students) and there are plenty of people who are part of it, and there are frosh activities and year-long stuff designed for the off-campus crowd. Also, I think my school tends to support living off-campus simply for lack of rez space. They are full right now, and are desperately trying to figure out how they’ll manage the double cohort coming up in a few years. Although the town does have a rental problem: vacancy rate tends to be something along the lines of 0.5%

20

The other thing I wanted to mention -

Like conchita, I haven’t heard of required dorm life before. None of the universities I know of (in both Québec and Ontario) require this, even the small liberal arts one back home. Perhaps it’s an american thing?