Though the 2010 Campus Plan poses serious concerns for student living, the University should not mandate on-campus housing for juniors. Instead, it should increase incentives for upperclassmen to choose on campus housing themselves. At a focus group with GUSA members, administrators from Residential Living proposed the mandate as an option to help the University comply with the campus plan’s requirement of placing 385 additional beds on campus by 2015. GUSA President Trevor Tezel (SFS ‘15) and Vice President Omika Jikaria (SFS ‘15) oppose the third-year requirement—and with good reason.
The Office of Residential Living recently released housing proposals that focus on policies that impact on-campus student life, renovations of existing facilities, and potential changes to housing guarantees or requirements.
Expanding the current “small gathering” policy is a step in the right direction. Lifting of the keg limit and the trial open container policy in the outdoor grill areas of Village A and Henle are examples of this idea. Housing policies alone, however, cannot fully placate students when the quality of housing options is subpar.
The renovated former Jesuit Residence will house 160 students, while the Northeast Triangle is projected to house 225 students in suite-style housing. While ongoing and future residential projects will include new outdoor, study, and lounge space, the bottom line is that they are indeed dorms—and upperclassmen will not want to live in dorms, no matter how fancy they are. Though Georgetown’s renovations of current facilities will make on-campus apartments like Henle more attractive, those apartment-style options will become harder to win in the housing selection process as new dorm-style facilities are constructed.
Georgetown’s on-campus housing currently includes 1,816 apartment beds and 3,237 residence hall beds. With the addition of the two new dorm facilities bringing the total to 5,438 beds, the ratio of dorm-style versus apartment housing will increasingly diminish, and with it, the autonomy and privacy of students closer to graduation than orientation. With more juniors living in on-campus housing, sophomores will get pushed out of apartment opportunities. So long as dorm facilities are of high quality, this change will not be an issue. What is an issue, however, is that for many upperclassmen, off-campus housing options are less expensive and higher quality—a seven-person Nevils costs $5,121 per semester, while a Burleith townhouse can cost as low as $900 per month.
Within the past ten years, all upperclassmen who applied for eligibility and were placed on the waitlist received a housing assignment. Nonetheless, a third-year housing guarantee would be a proper transition into complying with the campus plan as opposed to a third-year housing requirement that limits independent living opportunities during residential restructuring. However, it is up to the University to provide adequate apartment-style housing for its upperclassmen students if it hopes to remotely come close to its campus plan compliance goal.
