UB's new policy regarding overcapacity residence hall students - namely, putting students up at a local hotel - is shortsighted and impractical. Students, and particularly students new to UB such as transfer students, should not have to be isolated from campus, classmates and residence hall amenities because the university did not adequately provide for the number of students accepted to on-campus housing.
With the current room reservation policies, these students should remain in overcapacity on-campus housing, as they do now, until the university can find a spot for them. Even though this is somewhat inconvenient for both the permanent residents of the room and the overcapacity resident, it is preferable to keeping these students off-campus, where the tangible benefits of dining halls and laundry machines and the intangible benefits of the social atmosphere are not as accessible.
Students often make friends and establish routines in the first weeks of their college experience, and to jeopardize that to temporarily make a little extra room ignores the full picture. The university's decision to allow all freshmen into the dorms and move only upperclassmen and transfers into hotels shows that this has been taken into account; for freshmen, this initial period of acclimation is all the more important. That, however, does not make it okay to deny an upperclassmen this same time of adjustment.
On a practical note, it is very difficult to move all of one's belongings in and out of a room. This difficulty exists if one is only moving to the next room over in a hallway. If one has to move from one building to another on a different street, or down the block, this process becomes particularly cumbersome. Students who do not have cars or whose parents cannot return to help them move will face difficulties.
Another drawback to the hotel plan is that amenities like a dining hall and meal plan cannot be used as they can on-campus. Laundry cannot be done as easily as it can in a residence hall, where this service is convenient and provided free of charge.
Overcapacity living, on the other hand, affords students the chance to at least keep their belongings on-campus, ensuring that even when they get a regular room, the burden of moving will be less severe. Proximity to the new room, coupled with the newfound friends to help move, will more than make up for the lack in comfort in the first weeks of the semester.
Ultimately, however, this problem comes down to planning. The university needs to do a better job in the initial allotment and reservation of on-campus housing. Currently, more than 200 students will be without a home in the residence halls after having paid their deposit on time. There must be another way to make sure that everyone who needs a room can be given one.
Students that live too far to temporarily commute, for instance, should be given priority to those that can make their way to campus for a few weeks. This way, at least, no students are made homeless or unable to attend classes for the first weeks of school.
Next, the monetary penalty for reserving a room and not showing up should be increased to deter students from breaking their residency agreements. Additionally, the university ought to consider accepting fewer residence hall reservation deposits than they do now, planning not for students to drop out, but planning for precisely the number of students they have room to accommodate.
In short, hotel rooms are not the answer to overcapacity students. A new method must be developed for dealing with the students wanting to live on campus. In place of a better idea, however, the current system of placing students in overcapacity rooms is preferable to temporarily moving them off campus.
The residence halls provide convenient access to a number of services and are an important source of collegiate social acclimation. The community atmosphere fostered by residence hall life is not going to be duplicated in a hotel room, and the first weeks of the semester can set the tone for the rest of the year.
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
