Author: Rachel Stober
Residential Education and Housing Services (REHS) approved 60 out of 87 third-year live-off applications for next year, offering upcoming juniors the chance to live off campus as almost half the senior class chose rooms in residence halls during room draw.
Though the college requires students to live on campus for their first three years, juniors may appeal to live off campus by submitting a brief application, consisting of basic information about their academics and conduct and a short questionnaire. According to Associate Director of ResEd Juls White, 81 juniors were offered the opportunity to live off-campus last year.
The number of juniors exempted from the three-year live-on requirement depends on the number of seniors who choose to live on campus, White said. To determine which students will get the spaces, ResEd considers three factors: campus involvement, grade point average (GPA) and conduct history. Student engagement is considered first, although weighed with the least importance, according to White.
“The goal is to make sure you are involved and connected to campus in some way,” White said. “Now if that way is by being off campus, then we look at, are there other ways that you are connected to campus?”
From there, students are ranked by their GPA and conduct history with those with the highest grades and least amount of misconduct rising to the top.
“There were a lot of students who applied who had absolutely no conduct at all and great GPA’s,” White said.
Cynthia Haynes (senior), who has worked as a Residential Adviser the past three years, attests to the influence of campus involvement on scholarship and feels that it is important for students to live on campus for three years.
”It has been shown that students with high levels of participation on campus do better than students who are not involved,” Haynes said. “By requiring students to live on campus for three years, Oxy encourages students to become more active with their campus community, thereby enabling residents to be better students.”
In addition to nurturing student involvement and academic excellence, White said that the three-year live-on requirement also serves to foster the residential and campus community that is central to Occidental’s ideals.
“It’s a part of Oxy; it’s a part of the experience to live here and be here,” White said.
White believes that students are less likely to attend extracurricular events or see their friends when it involves coming back to school from an off-campus location. Sophie Bielders (junior), who lives only a few blocks away from campus, testified to this.
“Honestly I feel like you have to make a way bigger effort to see people [when you live off campus], especially because there aren’t a lot of juniors off campus,” Bielders said. “During the week I feel like I’m so busy, and then I finally get home, I’m not going to make an effort to either come back, or people coming over is also hard because everyone has all their friends on campus.”
However, Bielders also noted that she values and enjoys her time on campus more now whether that means savoring the food at the Marketplace or stopping to read a book in the quad. Perhaps most importantly, Bielders feels living outside of the College’s residential life allows for valuable freedom and responsibility for students.
“I just feel like overall it’s a really good experience of independence,” Bielders said. “We just had an ant infestation and I learned how to take care of that, and we had a toilet that didn’t flush and just crappy little things that you have to deal with… and I feel like now next year, and moving off into the real world, I’ll be more prepared for that kind of stuff than I would be in a dorm.”
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