The new Village at West Campus

Bobcat Village has embarked on a multi-faceted plan to change students’ opinion of the on-campus apartment complex, starting with a name change.
Bobcat Village will now be officially recognized as The Village at West Campus.
Dr. Paul Jahr, director of University Housing, explained that the change is a result of a marketing study geared to help students identify West Campus as a part of the school and not just a place students live.
Many students, however, will continue to choose off-campus living over The Village for other reasons.
“It’s just one of those things where you feel more free off campus,” said Casey Brown, a sophomore education major.
Brown currently lives at Magnolia Park, but lived at Bobcat Village last year.
“Magnolia has nicer apartments, more amenities and just the freedom feeling of living off campus.”
Another change is to dedicate the 500 and 600 buildings at West Campus as freshmen housing. A policy that GCSU hopes will encourage students to stay at Bobcat Village into their upperclassmen years, according to a GCSU Housing document entitled New Strategies.
The school has initiated a program in which the first 500 students to sign a contract to live at The Village will receive their July 2008 rent free.
“I think students will look into that and just see that it’s a good offer,” Jahr said. “Hopefully they’ll see that we are making efforts to bring them in and welcome them to stay here. And the one month free rent really makes a difference in money.”
GCSU has also announced plans to make a physical change. They will build a community building that Jahr said will include a new food services facility, classrooms and a social area. The building will be built centrally, overlooking the soccer field.
“It doesn’t matter what they do, students want to be free,” said Brad Kuglin, a senior accounting major who currently lives at Magnolia Park. “You don’t want to have that whole “Big Brother”-type thing looking over you on campus and you know, you can’t beat the pool area at Magnolia.”
Gina Peavey, who is the executive assistant to the vice president of Student Affairs, said that the changes are being made because students demand more from student living than ever before.
“Basically we just need to compete better with the off campus living market,” Peavey said. “Magnolia and The Grove have kind of come in and become the new, exciting thing. We hope that we can make the changes to bring some students back here.”
The school has recently conducted a number of focus groups with students to study what changes will make The Village more attractive to them. Brown and Kuglin attended a focus group of Magnolia Park residents.
“The focus group was fun, everyone pretty much agreed that Magnolia is just better fit for, you know, all of us than Bobcat is,” Brown said.
Some students, however, are happy with Bobcat. Frank LaVelle, a sophomore chemistry major and Bobcat resident said he plans to stay there.
“It’s great, the best part is not having caps on the utilities, you can run water and heat and it won’t raise your rates at all,” LaVelle said. “And the shuttle service is pretty good.”
Lavelle said he is somewhat familiar with the changes for next year.
“(The changes are) a great idea. I like the classroom idea, to not have to go farther away for classes and an eating area. What a great advantage.”
Jahr believes that The Village offers a great product to students.
“Obviously, living at Bobcat, we’re not looking for the hellacious partiers. If you want to have a keg party at the pool we’re not for you,” Jahr said. “Our occupancy is not where we would like it to be, but if we make the changes and get the word out, I think it could be right where it needs to be.”
The changes, however, do not impress students like Brown and Kuglin.
“We just want to be able to have a little more fun, Magnolia is nicer and the changes at Bobcat just really don’t quite do it for me after living there last year. I won’t be going back,” Brown said. “I like it (at Magnolia).”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Mar 16 2007. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry