Every Guilford College student must make a choice of where to live during the academic year. With the traditional student body growing, residential choices are becoming more limited every year.
“Many students were unhappy with the housing selection last spring,” said Alyson Kienle, associate dean of Campus Life. “There was a lack of space, particularly in Bryan Hall and the apartments.”
On Tuesday, Sept. 7, Campus Life held an open forum that gave students an opportunity to voice their opinions about campus residential life. A total of 10 students showed up to meet with Aaron Fetrow, dean of Campus Life, and Kris Gray, residential living coordinator.
At the forum, the housing options that came up were the construction of additional on-campus housing, expanding study abroad programs and leasing off-campus housing.
According to the newly-implemented Strategic Long-Range Plan for Guilford, two new residential buildings will be constructed by 2010.
Fetrow said that students he has polled are most interested in “pod”-style housing. Pod-style dorms consist of bedrooms surrounding one central living room and kitchen area. The rooms could be a mix of both singles and doubles.
Another option to alleviate the housing problem would be to expand study abroad programs so that more students would be off campus during the year. As a whole, students at the open forum supported this option because it would promote diversity and values within the student body while also opening up on-campus housing.
“The improvement and expansion of abroad programs is a good step,” Kienle said. “But it is also difficult to predict an exact number of students going abroad every semester.”
The other option discussed at the forum was leasing off-campus housing, which brought up concerns about how this would affect the Guilford community.
“I think that it would go against the Quaker values that Guilford upholds if the school became a primarily commuter campus,” said junior Anna Clarke, who lives on campus. “The school would lose a lot of character.”
Allowing more students to live off-campus also raises issues of safety. “It becomes a liability issue,” Kienle said. “If the students have to walk across or drive on busy roads to go to school, their safety is at risk.”
But there are advantages for students living off-campus.
“In a dorm situation, students are still for the most part monetarily supported by their families,” said Carly Kester, a senior who lives off-campus. “I felt like it was important for me to be responsible for my own bills and living expenses while I was still in that monetary safety net before I move on to ‘real life.'”
Kester added: “I think that first-years should definitely live on-campus, but I think the rules for allowing upperclassmen to live off-campus should respect their decision-making skills as adults to decide what is best for them.”
Kienle did say that Campus Life is considering altering the qualifications to live off-campus. “Right now, to live off campus, you have to be at least 21 and have 88 academic credits,” she said. “We might change the policy so that it is equal and not just based on ageism. Students would submit an essay and would be considered by their judicial and academic history; it would be a more holistic approach.”
This holistic method would be applied to on-campus housing selection as well. Kienle said that the selection process might become a lottery system that would employ random selection rather than basing housing assignments on credits.
“Providing an equal opportunity for students to live on-campus aligns with Quaker values,” Kienle said.
Above all, Campus Life wants to know what students are thinking since they will be the ones most affected by the changes made.
“We are interested in what Guilford students want,” Kienle said. “We are giving more consideration to the students as people, not numbers.