Imagine figuring out who you want to live with, going through the exhausting process of finding a house in town, and then signing a lease, confident that, since you have a high class rank and a low random number, you’ll be able to live off-campus. Now imagine being informed by a blue sheet of paper in Wilder that you’ll be required to spend yet another year in an on-campus dorm room. This is exactly what happened two weeks ago, when almost 90 students were dismayed to find that they would not be granted off-campus housing.
Granting off-campus housing privileges to first semester juniors by lottery has been the policy of Residential Life and Services since 1990, though in recent years high enrollment has meant that virtually all juniors have been allowed to live off-campus. The housing crunch last year, exacerbated by the loss of thirty-five beds in Barrows due to construction, created a false impression among students that all juniors could live off-campus.
“I’ll be 22 next year and I don’t want to live around a bunch of 17 year-olds drinking beer for the first time,” one rising junior said, echoing a common sentiment among many juniors and seniors.
Some students denied off-campus privileges merely face inconvenience for next year. Others, who ignored ResLife’s warning against making town housing arrangements before the lottery, face more serious problems.
“Knowing that it was possible that I wouldn’t be allowed to live off-campus I went ahead and signed the lease, figuring I could talk my way out of it if I had to,” one rising junior denied off-campus housing said.
According to ResLife, the policy of granting off-campus housing by lottery stems from both a need to cover the expenses of running residence halls while keeping costs down for on-campus students, and a desire to foster community through residence hall life.
“This is a residential college and we truly believe in the benefits of living in dorms,” ResLife Assistant Director Sandra Hougland said.
Despite efforts to create a sense of community among students by encouraging living in dorms Oberlin has a significantly lower number of students living on-campus than peer institutions. According to school statistics, at Wesleyan, Middlebury and Vassar nearly all students live in college operated housing facilities compared to only 70 percent at Oberlin.
Many students disagree with the idea that living in a dorm encourages supportive relationships among residents. “I don’t feel that being enclosed with people is building a community,” sophomore Seth Garrison said.
“While it’s good to live in a dorm and have that kind of community, it’s [also] good to live your own, and pay your own bills and clean your own bathroom and experience all that stuff that’s part of life,” Resident Assistant Ryan Carter said.
The administration is slowly responding to student desires for housing facilities that accommodate more independent and comfortable residential experiences. The number of on-campus apartments will be greatly increased by the projected Fall 2003 opening of the Firelands Retirement Center building on South Main Street for student housing.