The Voice
Remember when your high school teachers always warned you, “When you go to college, you’re not going to have anyone telling you what to do–telling you to go to class or to do your homework?” Well, did Mrs. Crabapple ever mention that there’s an exception to that rule, that you’ll be told exactly where to live your freshman year?
The new “freshmen must live on campus” policy has a lot of people for it and a lot of people against it.
“The Colonnade” staff doesn’t agree with this new policy.
Living in the dorms usually generates positive experiences. It’s beneficial for freshmen new to Milledgeville and Georgia College & State University to be clumped together. It gives newcomers a sense of community, and they’re with a bunch of other freshmen in the same boat…trying to figure out the ropes of college. Students residing on campus tend to make better grades and get more out of their college experience.
But should freshmen have to live on campus?
Should people whose parents live close to campus have to pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars a month to live right down the street from Mom and Pop’s? That’s costly. Often, students must stay home and attend the university in their community, because it’s way too expensive to live away from home.
And then there are those people who have issues. Living issues. They are peculiar and cannot share spaces with others. They aren’t comfortable being surrounded by a bunch of other rowdy freshmen. Is GC&SU going to turn these people away, practically handing them over to Georgia State or Valdosta State for the next four or five years? Is GC&SU going to let these students miss out on the whole public liberal arts education only because they didn’t want to live on campus?
Don’t get us wrong. Most of us lived in the residence halls and for the most part, our experiences were positive ones. ‘Dormers’ meet a lot of people and make friendships that can last throughout and beyond college. A whole lot of memories are made while living in the halls.
Look at these suites the freshmen get to live in. They’re a heck of a lot nicer than the residence halls where most of us resided. They’ll be brand new, beautiful and so upscale! We don’t get why GC&SU is forcing freshmen to live on campus in Fall 2003 when all these wonderful halls will be up. One would think GC&SU would have forced freshmen to live on campus when we had yucky old musty residence halls…not when we’ll have these nice suites that the majority of next year’s freshmen would jump at the chance to live in anyway. Unless, of course, the cost of residing in these suites is going to be a heavy pull on the purse. Then the university may have to force students to live in them…
“The Colonnade” staff strongly encourages students to experience the adventurous and rewarding world of residence hall life. But we don’t agree with this policy that makes every freshman who comes through the GC&SU gates live on campus. There are some situations and some types of people that just aren’t made for residence halls.
If you read last week’s article “Local parents fight for child’s right to live off campus”, you know that Valdosta State University has this “freshmen must live on campus” policy this year. The university is doing away with the policy in Fall 2003.
Posted by Colonnade Archives
on Oct 25 2002. Filed under Our Voice.
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