Archives for : Housing
With housing registration right around the corner, a new email about off-campus housing regulations sent April 2 from Jeff Mackay, associate dean of students/director of Residence Life, has some students rethinking their living situations for next year.
Mackay announced in an email that off-campus housing is now only available to students who are in their fourth year, 21 years of age prior to the start of the 2013-14 academic year, living with parent(s) or guardian(s) in their primary home of residence within 20 miles of the McMinnville campus, married or in a registered domestic partnership or have a qualifying dependent living in the primary home of residence.
This is a change from the previous exemption rules in which off-campus housing was determined by amount of credits. If a student had a senior standing in credits, he or she was able to get off-campus housing.
This year, Linfield examined housing exemption criteria at other private colleges and universities in the Pacific Northwest.
It was discovered that Linfield was the only institution that had a financial criteria to exempt students from the college housing requirements and allowed an appeal process.
After this discovery was made, the president and President’s Cabinet approved the new exemption criteria.
“At Linfield, students who live on campus get higher GPAs than students who live off
campus. National research tells us those students who live on campus graduate at higher rates than students who live off campus,” Mackay said in an email. “Students who live on campus are generally more engaged in campus life and have higher cognitive development in many areas than students who live off-campus. On campus students have more exposure to a diverse living community than students who live off campus. On campus students have closer access to resources to help with their success: RAs, library, academic advising, counseling, learning support services, etc.”
Mackay and other administrative officials have noticed that students are concerned about the changes and that they may no longer meet the criteria to move off campus prior to their fourth year at Linfield.
This is not the first year changes have been made to the exemption factors. Last year, the financial exemption amount was increased by $2,500.
In previous years, the mileage for students living at home reduced from 60 to 30 and finally to 20 miles.
To respond to student concerns, the administration has agreed that old exemption rules continue to apply to some existing situations, while the new exemption rules will apply to all future situations.
If a student lived off-campus this year and will not meet the new criteria, administration will allow them to continue living off campus as long as they meet the previous criteria again.
Administration will be following this grandfather clause for any student who was exempt last year as a result of the financial criteria.
“Some students have been taking extra classes during Jan Term and summer sessions in order to achieve senior status (94 or more credits) in order to meet the former criteria and move off campus. As a result of conversations with students, we will allow any student who reaches senior status (94 credits or more) by the start of fall semester 2013 to file a housing exemption,” Mackay said in an email. “This will be a one-year only exception to the new exemption criteria. This will not apply to the 2014-15 academic year so please do not base academic plans on the assumption that you will be approved to move off campus without meeting the standard three-year residential requirement at Linfield.”
Alyssa Townsend /Opinion editor
Alyssa Townsend can be reached at linfieldreviewopinion@gmail.com.
Residence Halls
Anderson Hall (male only): singles, doubles, triples
Features: Window seats (some), built-in bunk beds (some)
Campbell Hall (coed): Singles, Doubles, Triples
Features: Walk-in closets (most)
Elkinton Hall (coed): Singles, Doubles, Triples
Features: Sinks in room, handicap access, and color-accented walls
Frerichs Hall (coed, substance-free): Singles, doubles, triples
Features: Color-accented walls, window seats (some), bike storage inside
Grover Hall (female only): Singles, doubles, triples
Features: Sinks in room (most)
Hewitt Hall (coed): Singles, doubles
Features: Recently re-modeled
Jane Failing Hall (coed): Singles, doubles, triples
Features: Sinks in room (most), walk-in closet (select rooms), window-seats (third floor)
Larsell (coed): Singles, doubles, triples, suites
Features: Two lounge spaces
Latourette Hall (coed): Doubles, triples
Features: Walk-in closets, built-in bunk beds
Mahaffey Hall (coed): Singles, doubles, triples
Features: Inside bike storage, elevator, handicap access
Memorial Hall (female only): Singles, doubles, triples
Features: Armoires
Miller Hall (coed): Singles, doubles, triples, suites
Features: Easy access to athletic facilities
Newby Hall (coed): Doubles, triples, quads/suites
Features: All suite resident, living/dining area and kitchenette
Pioneer Hall (female only): Doubles, triples, quad/suites
Features: High ceilings, tall windows
Potter Hall (coed): Singles, doubles, triples
Features: Extra-long twin beds, walk-in closets (some)
Terrell Hall (coed): Singles, doubles, triples
Features: Sinks in room, color-accented walls, extra-long beds, handicap access
Whitman Hall (coed): Singles, doubles, triples
Features: Color-accented wall, window seats (some), extra-long twin beds, inside bike storage, handicap access
Suburbs
Dana Hall: Doubles
Features: Two bedroom/one bath, kitchenette, common area, furnished
The Blaine Street Apartments (“The Greens”): Doubles, triples
Features: Two furnished bedrooms, unfurnished living room, full kitchen
The College Avenue Apartments (“The Whites”): Doubles, triples
Features: Furnished bedrooms, unfurnished living room, full kitchen
Hewlett-Packard Park Apartments (“HPs”): Doubles, triples, quads
Features: Fully furnished, individual laundry machines, full kitchen
Legacy Apartments: Doubles
Features: Cat-friendly, unfurnished bedrooms, unfurnished living room, outdoor patio space, full kitchen
The 540 Apartments (The Reds”): Doubles
Features: Unfurnished living room, full kitchen, furnished bedrooms, backyard space
Housing Changes
Linfield’s Residence Life has planned multiple changes to housing for the 2012-2013 school year.
The Legacy Apartments, which are off-campus, are becoming “cat-friendly.”
Potter Hall will no longer be considered a substance free or Wellness Hall.
During the summer, Latourette Hall will be renovated.
Dana Hall will be used as double apartments.
Registration Process
Priority is given to those who have the most credit hours, and if a tie occurs between groups, it goes to the student with the most credits in a group. If there is a tie between that, the student with the lowest student identification number gains priority.
Make sure you have a list of your housing preferences just in case you do not get your first choice.
If you want to live in a suburb, each student must have 62 credits minimum or have an approved Suburb Housing Petition.
When going to register, you must bring the housing registration card, which was placed in eligible students’ mailboxes.
Registration will take place in the upper gym, and you have to bring your student ID card.
A contract will be signed when you sign up for a room. You cannot hold open spaces for students who are not eligible to register or won’t be on campus.
If you are unable to attend registration, you have to arrange with someone to choose for you. They must bring your housing preference card and a note signed by you.
A student can only register once for housing and you must have enough students to fill the room.
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Ivanna Tucker/Features editor
Ivanna Tucker can be reached at linfieldreviewfeatures@gmail.com.
Photos by Kate Staube
While comparing public and private schools before coming to college, the detail of being required to live in college housing can often be missed. Linfield requires its students to live in college housing until they are either living within 30 miles of the school with their parents, 21 years of age, married or in financial need.
Considering more than half of the student population does not live within 30 miles, and the majority of the students are entering Linfield shortly after high school, a good number of students do not qualify to live off campus. But why is it so difficult to be allowed off campus?
At public schools, such as Oregon State University and the University of Oregon, the school does not require its students to live on campus even during their first year, as do many other schools. This leads one to question why Linfield restricts this liberty that is given to students at other institutions.
Although public schools do not require first-year students to live on campus, there are benefits to living in college housing for the first year of college.
For instance, students are able to make new friends and make an easy transition. In making new friends, freshmen are able to create a comfortable environment to make any adjustments they might need to make with the help of trained staff.
Another plus to living on campus is that students are then closer to their classes.
After the first year of college, the decision of where you’d like to live should include living off-campus.
College is all about independence and growing up; forcing students to live on campus clashes violently with the liberty that is supposed to come with adulthood and higher education.
Other colleges that require this are private schools a lot like Linfield, such as Pacific University, Willamette University and the University of Puget Sound.
While looking at the schools that often require this, one would think that a student’s desire to make their college experience more affordable would be enough of a reason to be allowed to live off-campus.
When someone wants to go through the process of being approved to move off-campus, the process is tiresome. There are so many people you have to see if you don’t meet any of the requirements.
Students can be sent to many places for information, such as financial aid, residence’s life or student affairs. It’s like being told to jump through a bunch of hoops; it shouldn’t have to be that difficult.
Living off-campus can help a student realize what it’s actually like to take on the responsibilities of being an adult on your own. It creates a turning point in life where students can make the transition from being a teenager to being an independent adult.
While the incentive for the college to fill its coffers with bloated housing fees is obvious, the potential benefits to the student should also be taken into consideration.
While there are many positive reasons to living on-campus, there are also reasons to live off-campus. Let the students decide where they’d like to live in this new chapter of their lives.
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Kaylyn Peterson/Sports editor
Kaylyn can be reached at linfieldreviewsports@gmail.com
Housing registration starts April 26 and that means one thing for many students: stress. Finding roommates, picking a housing option and tallying credits may drive many students up the wall, but students in Residence Life offer their advice to make housing registration go as smoothly as possible.
Roommate selection tips
Senior Jesse Aerni, Residence Life assistant for program development, said students need to take compatibility into consideration when choosing roommates. This goes for many areas of life: schedules, cleanliness, social lives and rules on sharing.
“Also, if you don’t know this person, just looking at the type of people they hang out with or associate themselves with [helps],” junior Mica Parke, who was Residence Life housing assistant in the fall and will be a Resident Advisor next academic year, said.
She said you could discern a lot about a person by observing who their friends are. Also, if you haven’t found a roommate yet, Parke recommends scouring the student public folders in the college email system because students sometimes post there when they need a roommate.
“You can find roommates anywhere — walking through halls, browsing the Facebook page ‘Do You Need A Roommate?,’ attending hall events, attending the monthly suburb events or by browsing the posters with campus floor plans posted outside of the Student Affairs Office in Melrose,” senior Lacey Dean, housing assistant, said in an email.
Location selection tips
Many students choose housing based on locations with the newest facilities, Parke said, so halls such as Elkinton and Terrell and suburbs such as the Hewlett Packard Park Apartments tend to be chosen first during housing registration.
But students should look beyond newness.
“I would say that if you want to get the feeling of life after college, get into the Legacies because you’re farther away from campus so you’re relying more on yourself,” Aerni said about the Legacy Apartments.
He said many students choose to live in the HPs because of the scenic view of Nicholson Library or the exciting view of athletic fields. Students who live facing the fields can watch games from the HP stairwells.
Location is a key factor for choosing housing. Aerni said many education-studying students live in Potter Hall to be near classes, and student athletes often live in Miller Hall because of its proximity to the Ted Wilson Gymnasium. He said students should also consider distance to the library.
Junior Hope Fredregill, Residence Life assistant for community relations, said students should not overlook the campus’s wellness halls, Potter and Frerichs. She said students living in wellness halls cannot come back to their halls intoxicated.
Parke said students need to ask a lot of questions when considering housing options.
“If you’re interested in living there, talk in depth to people who currently live there,” she said. “Talk to [your] RA. They know a lot about these kinds of things.”
She said many students forget to look at the negatives of various locations.
Aerni said Pioneer Hall has large rooms with high ceilings and is great for girls looking for a quad, but it is an older building.
“People tend to complain about bugs and birds flying into the window,” he said.
Students also overlook noise concerns. Parke said people living in the HPs forget to consider what level they are on and who is going to live above them. Also, Parke and Aerni both said to be wary of places near dumpsters.
“On sides of the building that face where garbage cans are, you can hear the trash being picked up at 6 a.m.,” Aerni said.
These buildings include Whitman, Elkinton, Terrell and Jane Failing halls.
Aerni said students living in Terrell and Mahaffey halls need to consider their vicinity to the softball field, since the team practices and plays music on game days.
Students can find blueprints of all the housing options online at //www.linfield.edu/reslife/housing/housing registration/housing-options.html. Click on the links to individual locations to see the floor plans.
Housing changes
The biggest housing change this year is probably the conversion of Dana Hall from a suburb apartment to a residence hall. Fredregill said many underclassmen students may overlook it because they don’t know about it this year.
Like Newby Hall, Dana has a kitchenette and its own bathrooms. Students living in these halls still need to be on a meal plan.
Dana will also house triples instead of doubles, with three people sharing two rooms.
Suites without bathrooms in Miller and Larsell halls are being converted into three doubles because students weren’t signing up for the suites, Parke said.
Many housing options, including Whitman, Pioneer and the College Avenue Apartments, have also been updated within the past two years. Updates include new paint, carpet and furniture, but not all locations got all of these updates.
Jane Failing Hall’s garden level and Miller Hall’s second floor will be opened up to male students, and Elkinton, Campbell and Miller third floors will be female student floors.
Registration tips
The number one tip from Residence Life students about housing? Don’t show up early.
“People think if they come early, there’s an advantage, but there’s not,” Fredregill said.
Students must bring their ID cards and cards with their total credits, which they received in their unit boxes, and Residence Life staff members will total the credits for the roommates.
Aerni said they don’t start registration until everyone’s inside. He said the only benefit to showing up early is getting a seat.
“After the first 100 people, there are no seats, and you sit on the floor,” he said.
Parke said students should come in with at least two backup plans, especially if they want to live in Elkinton, Terrell or the HPs.
“If your first housing choice is taken, it is much easier and more satisfying if you have a second choice ready,” Dean said in an email.
But Fredregill said students should not stress over housing registration even if they don’t get their first choice.
“People make it into this big, competitive thing, but I don’t think it’s that big of a deal,” she said. “Just stay calm; don’t get so worried about it.”
For more information about housing, including location descriptions, pictures, costs, etc., visit www.linfield.edu/reslife/housing/housing-registration.html
By Kelley Hungerford/Editor-in-chief
Kelley Hungerford can be reached at linfieldrevieweditor@gmail.com.