Overcrowding remains problem in dorms

Overcrowding at an IU basketball game might make Hoosiers happy, but overcrowding in IU dorms is making incoming freshman enraged. So the easiest thing to change seems to be the freshmen requirement to live in the dorms, right?

Junior Greg Lawson is one of the few IU students who wasn't required to live in the dorms as a freshman.

At IU, having a permanent residence within a 25-mile radius of the University exempts a student from living in the residence halls as long as the proper forms are completed.
Lawson, a Bloomington native, filled out those forms and spent his freshman year living in his Bloomington home with his mom and dad.

“They always told me, 'Why spend that extra $7,000?'” Lawson said.

However, at some universities, living in a residence hall as a freshman is no longer a
requirement.

Living off campus freshman year, like the students at Purdue University are now allowed to do, might sound like a life of fewer Resident Assistants and a bigger room.
But Shishir Biswas, a junior in biomedical engineering at Purdue, said he isn’t so sure he lived the ultimate college life when he chose to live in an apartment on the opposite side of campus from the dorms his first year as a Boilermaker.

Although Biswas is from West Lafayette, he chose to get an apartment with some of his friends so he could have a car on campus.

During his freshman year, he said he sometimes noticed his friends that lived in dorms would sit by people from their dorms in class, but he said it wasn’t so much to the point that it bothered him.

Now, looking back, Biswas said he is rethinking his freshman living decision.

“Actually, I kind of regret it now,” Biswas said. “I kind of wish I lived in the dorms freshman year because I would have met a lot more people. I know a lot of my friends still talk to people they met freshman year in the dorms, so I do wish I had reconsidered that back then.”

Most likely, IU students will never have the option of choosing between living in residence halls or off-campus their freshman year.

Pat Connor, executive director of Residential Programs and Services, said it’s part of the IU Board of Trustees policy.

“The University’s priority is providing a good academic environment,” Connor said. “Our data on this campus as well as national data indicates that students who live on campus do better academically than students who do not live on campus.”

Although the data shows that it's best for students to live on campus during the duration of their college stay, this Big Ten university hasn’t been equipped to handle that many beds.

“As a campus, we’re concerned about the freshman year and making sure the freshmen get off to a good start,” Connor said. “The data clearly indicates that students who are living on campus as a first-year student are going, on average, to have a higher GPA and are also going to be the retention to their second year of college, and their progress toward graduation at the university is much stronger if you’re living on campus as a first-year student, and that’s why we do it.”

Currently, capacity for residential housing, not including apartments like Campus View, holds 10,500 beds.

While Lawson didn’t fill one of those beds during his freshman year as a Hoosier, he said he wouldn't change his decision. He still spent time with friends that lived in the dorms, ate off their meal points and saved money.

“In my opinion, it depends on the person,” Lawson said as to whether he thought freshmen at IU should ever spend their freshmen year like those at Purdue. “Some people are extroverts, and they’re going to be able to make friends no matter what. They’ll go to class and make 10 friends automatically. Then there are some people that are introverts. Those people need that dorm experience to force them into new relationships and social situations, or something like that. There are positives to both. I wouldn’t really side with one or the other.”