Inadequate housing is a problem that is beginning to consume our campus. When the Office of Residential Life sent out our 1994-95 housing priority numbers last week, Dean Bud Beatty enclosed a letter detailing the overcrowding we will experience in the fall and explaining, quite simply, some of us will be denied dorm housing. Based on my personal experience with our ORL, I would like to present a few alternatives to the current housing system and demonstrate the ridiculousness of a problem with housing on a dorm-oriented campus.
We attend an institution which prides itself on its "community" and unique "experience." Inherent in these concepts is our D-plan, to which certain rules are attached. We must be on campus for our entire freshman and senior years, in addition to our sophomore summer. During the freshman year, every student lives in a dorm and during sophomore summer, every student must live in housing "approved" by ORL (meaning anything other than a dorm or affiliated CFS house must be approved by the College). And on the subject of CFS houses, two years ago Dean of the College Lee Pelton mandated that students could not live in independent Greek houses, thus preserving the integrity of our "community."
Also contributing to the Dartmouth experience is the rule that freshmen cannot have cars here until the spring term. This forces the students to stay on campus most of the time and become accustomed to our unique campus and its community.
In the same vein as this rule, all enrolled students must purchase a meal plan with Dartmouth Dining Services. So even if upperclass students would rather drive to McDonald's every day for lunch and dinner, hypothetically they cannot because they have a sizeable sum of money already put towards a meal plan with DDS. This keeps students on campus more often as well.
I am certainly not arguing that all of these policies are bad ones. In fact, they make a positive contribution to our unique campus and allow "the Dartmouth Community" to exist and flourish. However, what many college officials seem to fail to comprehend is the hypocrisy in maintaining these "policies of community" while arriving at the point where many students are denied college housing.
If this is to be a residential college - a dorm-centered campus, as it has been - then the College must be able to house those who wish to live in a dorm. If the current state of affairs continues to worsen, the administration will eventually have to admit that Dartmouth is not what it used to be and make policy changes accordingly.
There are, however, a few changes which would help our situation immensely. First and foremost, we need another dormitory or cluster. Quite simply, if enrollment is increasing, more space is required to house those people. It doesn't take a genius to figure that out. If the College will not build another dorm, then it should bring enrollment down to an acceptable level.
Second, and more realistically, there must be a change in the housing wait-list assignment. Being "wait-listed" means that the student is not assigned to a dorm or cluster during the first stage of the assignment process and does not find out where he or she will be until mid-August. I know several people (myself included) who have been wait-listed for two years in a row and in addition got an abysmally low priority number this year as well!
This should not happen. ORL should have a policy that does not allow a student to be wait-listed more than once. The students who are wait listed each year should be guaranteed a decent priority number for the following year. It is simply not fair that some students are placed on the wait list every year and others get any housing they want every time they apply.
This problem seems to be getting worse every year and unless someone takes the initiative to make some changes, some of the things that make the College unique could indeed cease to exist. The Dartmouth Community will only remain as such if the administration takes steps to ensure that all who wish to live in College housing can do so.
