ON COLLEGE CAMPUS

ON VS. OFF: COLLEGE HOUSING OPTIONS

By Barrett Seaman

College life is an intense experience for many reasons, but it is especially so because it brings together young people at the height of a physical and intellectual growth period almost as profound as any since the first year of life. From 18 to 22, emerging adults search to find an intellectual pursuit they excel at and care about, to find someone to fall in love with, and ultimately to find themselves.
           
It’s especially intense for those who are leaving their family homes for the first time to live in a residential environment made up almost exclusively of people their own age, though often from different backgrounds and traditions. In researching my book about the contemporary college experience, Binge: Campus Life in an Age of Disconnection and Excess, I was struck by how intense every aspect of campus life seemed—and how destabilizing that could be for the uninitiated and unprepared.
           
From the first day, new students seek out friends with whom they can share the experience. Alcohol, even more than in my college days, has become the fuel that feeds the engine of social life. For some, casual sex, or “hooking up,” has replaced traditional dating as a mechanism to win friends and social status. Many more students—double the number less than two decades ago—arrive at college suffering from depression and on some form of prescription to combat it.
           
Most college co-eds are prepared for these experiences. Those who went to boarding school have already lived away from home. High school has its own set of social dynamics that test interpersonal skills, sometimes even more harshly than college life does. But for the home-schooled almost everything about college will be new and especially challenging.
           
Dorm life these days has its share of hazards. Having a roommate for the first time is one thing; living on a co-ed corridor, sometimes even sharing bathrooms with the opposite sex, is quite another. Students used to the controlled calm of the family home at night will have to adjust to distractions that invariably last well into the early morning hours.
           
Parents of the uninitiated can take some comfort in knowing that almost every residential college has an elaborate network of student affairs professionals on the payroll, providing a safety net for anyone who has trouble handling the vicissitudes of dorm living. Early on in the first semester especially, there will be lots of meetings—ice cream socials, pizza parties and programming designed to make everyone feel included and designed to distract the vulnerable from the temptations that come with freedom. In my view, these professionals can sometimes over-protect their charges, inadvertently preventing them from learning from their own mistakes. A student used to operating independently may find their presence claustrophobic at times.
           
Some colleges, especially the smaller private ones, encourage as many students as possible to live in the college dorms. Others, particularly the large state universities, often rely on local landlords to provide apartments for their students. Many offer a choice of college dorms or off-campus apartments, and deciding which is best often depends on the student’s personality and sense of independence.
           
The benefits of living off-campus include the independence from noisy, sometimes over-policed dorms and the growth that comes from managing one’s own affairs and cooking one’s own meals. On the downside, nightlife alone or with an apartment mate or two makes it harder to participate in the real fun of campus life—the late night gab sessions, even the water fights and pranks.
           
Many times off-campus apartment life contains the best—and worst—of both worlds: students tend to cluster in certain areas adjacent to campus and become ghetto-ized, in a sense. For example, the section of Montreal just beneath McGill University is, in fact, widely known as “The Ghetto.” Early in the semester, when the workload is relatively light and spirits are running high, McGill’s Ghetto can be a raucous din of partying, block after block. But by pre-exam reading period, you can practically hear a pin drop.
           
There are other housing options as well. A few coed campuses still offer single-sex housing—at least for women. One at the University of Wisconsin-Madison even sets limits on when males are allowed in the building. Most campuses offer some form of so-called “substance-free” housing, where residents agree to refrain from using alcohol or drugs. (That should tell you something about the regular dorms.)
           
One of the oldest forms of student housing, the co-operative, is alive and well on many campuses. Here, residents share the daily chores of cooking and cleaning in exchange for substantial savings in room and board costs. In many ways, co-ops are regulated communes.
           
Reporting for my book, I spent a week living in a co-op at the University of California-Berkeley, where co-ops have been a piece of the campus housing puzzle for three-quarters of a century. The one I lived in was pretty raucous: booze and drugs were in obvious use and the cleaning was sporadic at best. But other Berkeley co-ops were, by reputation and intention, more civilized.
           
In addition to their economic advantage, co-ops offer their residents the opportunity to develop skills of self-governance and, yes, cooperation outside the strictures of administrative regulations. But on the dark side of these opportunities are the risks of disorder and inefficiency.
           
American colleges and universities collectively offer an astonishing array of choices, in terms of size, location, academic focus and rigor—and in housing. Any given institution is likely to offer a wide variety of living arrangements. Depending on a student’s personality, sense of independence and need for social interaction, there’s bound to be one that works.

Barrett Seaman, a former Time magazine correspondent and editor and author of Binge: Campus Life in an Age of Disconnection and Excess, writes and speaks frequently about contemporary college life.

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