By Alice Thornewill
Returning to Grinnell after a leave of absence or a semester abroad can be stressful. Students have to face a dining hall filled with unfamiliar faces, the realization that they have to do real homework again and the inevitably of eating an outtake. This year, many returning students also had to deal with unexpected changes to their housing plans.
The Residence Life Committee denied almost all returning Grinnellians necessary permission to live off-campus.
Most of the students who applied for permission to live off-campus had already signed leases and had not expected to be prohibited from living off campus. The administration tries to keep the residence halls approximately 95 percent full.
“If we had granted permission to all those who asked, we would have been less than 90 percent full,” Conner said. “It’s a revenue-based decision. We are a residential campus.”
Andrea Conner and the Residence Life Committee anticipated that under-enrollment might be an issue based on the large size of the junior class and the percentage of students going abroad.
“In the past, we usually granted permission to approximately 200 students for the fall, but based on our predictions we only granted permission to 175 this year,” she said. Even so, returning study abroad students were needed to fill the dorms.
Mario Salazar ’11 was hoping to live off-campus for economic reasons and was surprised that his appeal was ineffective. “My main reason to live off-campus was to save money. I could have graduated without debt,” he said.
Salazar, who is 23 years old, should have automatically been granted permission based on his age, but he overlooked the policy, and the Residence Life Committee hopes to avoid this mistake in the future.
“We will be more deliberate and explicit about stating the four automatic conditions to be granted off campus approval during the process,” Conner said. “The online form to request off-campus approval for 2011-2012 has been edited to include an opportunity to alert us that a student meets one of those automatic approvals.”
Of the 29 students who requested permission to live off-campus for the spring semester, four were approved due to age or accommodation, six lived in the dorms in the fall and three had been on leaves of absences.
Conner stressed that not all of the remaining 16 applicants, all of whom had been abroad, were upset. “Of the 16 people, five didn’t even appeal and were totally okay with it,” she said.
The remaining 11 students appealed Resident Life’s decision, but all were denied.
“For the last two months of the semester Travis and I met every Friday about spring off-campus requests and reviewed the appeals and tried to make good, thoughtful decisions,” Conner said. “There were so many people with a similar situation that I didn’t have a solitary exception I could argue for. I knew I would not succeed with arguing for all 11.”
Many students remain displeased with the way the administration handled their living situation.
“I understand the need to fill the dorms, but what really bothers me about this situation is that I went into their offices last spring, told them that I knew the official policy, but asked if they thought it would be okay to sign a lease, and they said that I shouldn’t have any problems and that I should go ahead and sign it,” said Jayme Wiebold ’12.
Conner recognizes the complexity of the housing situation.
“Literally, up until this last year we always were able to approve any students that requested permission to live off campus,” she said. “That’s part of why this is so painful. People have precedents because they could look at what their friends did in the past.”
Glass thought living off-campus would improve her overall well-being.
“Grinnell is supposed to be all about the personal growth of the individual and I thought it would be better for my mental state to live in this house,” she said. “I wrote that in my appeal and they didn’t directly address it.”
Like a few others in similar situations, Glass chose to pay for her room on campus, but still lives in and pays for off-campus housing.
The housing process could still use some improvement, according to Glass.
“The whole policy has to be changed because it doesn’t make sense. If you want to have a house you have to sign a lease really early.”
Salazar and Glass also found it difficult dealing with their housing dilemmas from another continent.
“I couldn’t register for classes because I had this unexpected hold and I was trying to talk to 10 offices at the same time from France,” Salazar said. “It was so stressful.”
Students also complained about the lack of response from the administration.
“I remember I sent an email to the Dean of Residence Life about final decisions on whether they were denying off-campus requests, and it took her a full month to respond to me,” Wiebold said. “So not only did they really screw things up, they took forever to do so, which made it really hard for us to figure out our own situations, as far as subletters and everything.”
Most students have now worked out their housing arrangements. Some decided to pay for both college dorms and off-campus housings, and others broke their leases without heavy fines.
For the most part, the students have accepted their fate, but with some lingering laments.
Salazar said, “I was really looking forward to cook breakfasts at home.”