OP-ED: Living on campus: helpful or hurtful?
Rachel Crawford, fed-up junior
December 5, 2016
Students at Tarleton are required to live on campus for their first two years of college, unless they have enough credits or have a special situation. Requiring so many students to live on campus has caused a lot of problems.
The biggest problem with requiring students to stay on campus is the fact that Tarleton does not have enough housing for all the students they force to stay on campus.
I know right now a lot of construction is being done to help alleviate this problem, but it is causing a lot more problems than the good it is doing. If students were only required to live on campus for their first year, then Tarleton wouldn’t have to hurry to finish construction and displace students until their correct residential hall is complete.
Some students may decide to stay on campus after the required years, but I don’t think a lot of students will want to stay all four years on campus.
To me, the fact that students are required to live on campus for so long is just another way for the university to make money. I know that this money can be a good thing, but it would also save all the costs for construction on the new residence halls.
My solution, lower the required years to live on campus. It would solve a boatload of problems. But then again, universities love their money.
Kathryn Cornett • Dec 9, 2016 at 7:13 PM
I think you are absolutely correct. I graduated Tarleton as a nontraditional student in 2000. My son had to quit after his first semester at Tarleton because of the dorm expense. Now my grandson is a freshman at Tarleton and is having to live in the dorm and running up extreme student loans to pay for it. I don’t think the university should be able to tell young adults, 18 and over, that they have to live on campus, especially when they can live more cheaply somewhere else and have money left for food. I know my son had a hard time having money for food even thought he was a student worker at Tarleton.