Guilford welcomes 507 new traditional-aged students this year, including 448 first-year and 59 transfer students. That’s 153 more new students than last fall. This deliberate increase in enrollment has radically altered the make-up of the students living on campus.
Like any new demographic, this shift will result in new policies, positions, and places for the college.
“The Guilford economic and community plan aims to have 1,446 traditional students by 2009,” said Randy Doss, Vice President for Enrollment and Campus Life. “It was very deliberate strategic long range planning to bring in more students this year.”
Guilford did not accept a much larger percentage of applicants than last year: 71 percent instead of 69. However, 2,645 students applied to start Guilford this year; last year only 1,843 applied.
The increase in the number of students not only came from admitting more students, but more students applying. With 2,645 students applying as either first-years or transfer students, this year witnessed over 800 more applications than last year.
The increase is part of a national trend. Colleges all over the country received a record number of applications last year, according to collegeadmissioninfo.com.
The recruitment drive has changed the make-up of the student body living on campus. In order to house the first-year’s, the office for campus life released a letter during the summer offering juniors and seniors “a limited number of off-campus petitions to individuals who previously may not have been eligible to live off campus.”
“It worked out better than we could have planned,” said Anne Lundquist, Dean of Campus Life. “We got just enough students to volunteer to live off campus that we had space, and we’re not too crowded, so people can still change rooms around during roommate-switch week.”
With juniors and seniors living off-campus, only 14 percent of students living on campus will be over 21 years old when classes start, according to Lundquist. Binford Hall will have only four sophomores, and the rest of the students will be first-years. Residential Living Coordinator Kris Gray estimates that at least half the population of Bryan Hall and 60 percent of Milner Hall will be first-year’s as well.
Alternative housing and the apartments still hold no first-year students.
“Clearly the number of students has implications for enforcement of policies,” said Lundquist. “For example, by default there should be no drinking in Binford.”
The Residential Advisors (RA) and Hall Directors may also be adapting their programming to the new situation.
“We spent a lot of time learning about programming,” said Milner RA Cori Parmenter. “We’re all going to have to work on community building this year, particularly with mostly first-years on campus and the upper classmen off campus. I know they will be a priority for me.”
A new position, the Intramurals/First Year Activities Coordinator, will also work with first-year programming. Once filled, the new position’s responsibilities will include working with the first year student programming in the residence halls, ongoing/fall semester orientation programs, and selecting and training Chaos leaders, RAs and hall directors. No one has filled the position yet.
Campus living will not become just for first-year’s. Guilford has plans for at least 120 beds’ worth of new residence halls by next school year. Architects will be coming to bid for that contracts within the next two or three weeks, said Lundquist.
Furthermore, enrollment plans to have about 100 less first-year’s next year.
“We hope to slow the rate of growth, as per the plan, and bring in about 340 new students,” said Doss.
The new dorms and fewer first-year’s should allow more space for older students again, but that’s still a year away.
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First-year students change the face of Guilford
Seth Van Horn
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August 19, 2004
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