Oct. 3, 2006

Residence Life director comments on housing
Bruce Peterson lends his opinions on the state of housing at Marietta
By Jon Moffett
jrm001@marietta.edu
In the September, 14, 2006 issue of the Marcolian, the Spotlight featured the article “MC students face housing issues”. The article gave readers a look at what Marietta College has done to respond to its housing issues. However, it didn’t paint a completely clear picture of why this was happening.

In order to help clear up this mystery, the Marcolian sat down with Bruce Peterson, the director of residence life, and attempted to explore the reasons behind the decisions made by the college in regards to housing.

Q: First and foremost: Does Marietta College have a housing problem? Why or why not?
A: [Laughing] Well, we have more students on campus than we have beds, so I’d say yes.

Q: What happened that the college had to look outside of campus for housing this year?
A: Well, it wasn’t one thing that made this year different from years past. There are a couple of factors that we deal with every year, but this year they just compounded more. Every year, the college makes projections of how many students are expected to return, will be living on campus, and will be requiring housing. That being said, there are some variables that we just can’t take into account. The thing about this year is that a lot of students who moved off campus last year as juniors decided to move back on campus their senior year. I just find that so bizarre. It usually doesn’t happen, but this year it did. Because they had moved off campus, the school didn’t take them into account as needing campus housing.

Another big issue is the amount of international and transfer students that we received this year. You can never know the exact number of transfer students that you’re going to get and this year we got many more than expected. Transfer students are always the last to be accepted and always the hardest to determine as far as how many there are going to be.

Also, a lot of students, and this happens every year, simply choose not to return and don’t bother to tell anyone. Throughout the summer we send them letters and they don’t reply, so we just assume that they’ll be coming back. Since they went through the ORS [online room selection] process, we have beds reserved for them. When they don’t show up, we still have reservations for them.

Q: Why did the College look to the Glendale Apartments complex?
A: Well, the college had actually been looking at purchasing the Glendale complex for a while before this year. We started looking around January of last year because we were worried about housing. The numbers kept going up, and with Fayerweather being remolded we were really worried about how we were going to house everyone. After all, it’s much cheaper to buy additional housing than it is to build it. The remodeling of Fayerweather alone cost the school around $4 million and only opened up 53 beds.
Luckily we were able to work things out without needing additional housing, but looking back now, it’s a good thing we made the attempt to look at Glendale when we did, because it really helped us out this year with our housing issues.

We knew we had to look outside of campus to find housing because we didn’t want to do what a lot of smaller schools do, and that is take away other functional rooms in order to accommodate more beds. For instance, we could’ve taken the bike room from McCoy and transformed it into a room that could sleep four to six people. But we realize that this room, along with the lounges and kitchens, are essential to student life and didn’t want to take these areas away in order to allow for more students.

Q: In your opinion, is this a good thing or a bad thing for the school?
A: Oh, it’s a great thing for the school. The more students that come in, the better the school is doing. President Scott proposed a plan that would eventually increase the size of the campus to roughly 1,300-1,350 students. Without the option for the campus to expand, it’s important that we make sure the housing is sufficient. There are only 1,139 beds on campus, but there are a lot of commuter students who don’t require housing also, so we have to take that number into account as well.

Q: What about for the students?
A: I think it gives students a nice option to live off campus but still feel connected to the school. McCoy only has the six apartments, so it’s a new opportunity for students to get out and live in an apartment without being too far away from campus. I mean, they’re right by campus so it wouldn’t be that far to walk anyway.

Right now there are only 22 students in the apartments, and they are mostly the international transfer students who were the last to apply. However, we plan to utilize the apartments to the fullest in the upcoming years.

What most students don’t realize is that about 78 percent of all upperclassmen live on campus. We’d like to have the option for them to be able to move into Glendale and engage in a more true-to-life experience.

Q: What about safety for the students? In your opinion, are the Glendale apartments a safety risk?

A: As far as safety is concerned, we don’t feel that it’s really a big issue for a couple of reasons, the first reason being that as I said earlier, the residents that make up Glendale are mainly upperclassmen transfer students who should be wiser and more responsible for their own actions. I do understand that these are still college students, and I’m sure there will be a share of mischief going on, but we’re really not too worried about anything major.

Second, CPS isn’t that far away from the complex. They do monitor the activities there just as they do on campus and make sure that everything is alright before leaving for the night. If there are any serious issues, they can be called just as easily from the complex as they could be called from campus.

So far, there has really been only one issue that I am aware of, and it was simply a female student who didn’t feel comfortable making the walk from campus to her apartment, and we made accommodations for her. So as far as safety goes, we’re really not much more concerned about the complex than we are about campus itself.

Q: If the number of students that come to Marietta continues to increase, does the school have any plans to accommodate them?
A: Like I said before, the President has already developed a plan for the campus to expand population-wise, and we look forward to it. I really don’t see any other issues arising, but if they do, we’ll tackle them when they show up.