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New off-campus policy limits student freedom

By Jacob Meyer columnist 5 min read
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This issue of the Yellow Jacket features an article about the university banning off-campus living beginning in 2017. Any student who is admitted into Waynesburg during or after the fall of 2014 is not allowed to live in an off-campus house.

I am not writing about whether or not this is the correct decision, but rather the perception of the decision is dangerous.

For the reasoning behind implementing this change, Vice President for Student Services Mary Cummings said, “We always look at trying to maximize the capacity of our on-campus housing. On-campus [housing] is where we can provide what we say we are with Waynesburg University, which is the comprehensive control of community living.”

The end of that quote is the part that scares me about the perception of the new policy: “comprehensive control of community living.”

Obviously, one person did not make this decision; it was a decision that was well thought out and conversed upon for a long time before being implemented officially next semester.

I don’t think the university made this decision to control its students, but the perception of the decision could come off that way.

The purpose of college is not to be a “comprehensive control of community living.” College–other than earning a degree, of course–is where personal growth and the finding of one’s self is supposed to occur.

I do not know how that can happen if a university makes personal, individual decisions for students. Where a student lives is the most important and adult choice they make while in college. But now, the university makes that decision for us.

I will credit the university for informing the 2018 class that this would likely happen before taking their money.

Decisions like this are a slippery slope. First it starts with this, and who knows what comes next?

I am not concerned for myself; I am gone in two years. I doubt anything drastic will change in these next two years, and I cannot live off campus anyway since I am a baseball player (which seems like such a minor issue at this point).

I am concerned for where the university I love is heading. Decisions like these that are inherently against letting individuals choose for themselves will not lead for the most successful Waynesburg in the future.

The administration constantly compliments the great students we have at Waynesburg, yet this policy makes it seem like they don’t trust us to make individual choices for ourselves.

Colleges cannot be utopias, which is what this decision seems to try to make: a perfect society on the top of the hill.

Adding to the factors in the decision-making process, Cummings said the university has “had times where there have been community disruptions and community complaints about things that happen in houses that are rented by students.”

Obviously, the more students who live off campus the higher the chances of instances the university does not support happening are. I never like saying, “Let college kids be college kids,” but there are not many college campuses with the maturity of a student body like Waynesburg. Drive 30 minutes south to Morgantown, and the amount of problems that happen there are much more heinous than the problems in off-campus houses here.

Each student is different. Some will not care about this change and will come to Waynesburg anyway because of the mission that attracts a particular type of student. Others, on the flip side, could hear they cannot live off campus, which is something they find attractive in a college, and will decide–despite being a person who could be a great representative of Waynesburg–to not come here.

Right now Waynesburg is at a place where there is a lot of personality diversity on campus.

Others do not look at Waynesburg and think that it is a microcosm of the mission trying to achieve utopia status.

This policy change could create the perception to prospective students that Waynesburg is no different than Grove City and Geneva with the strict administrative policies at those colleges. The personality diversity on campus is what makes Waynesburg great; that could be lost with banning off-campus living.

Instead of being a positive for Waynesburg, banning off-campus living will give the university the perception of trying to control its students.

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