Anne-Megan Daniels was told that it would be easy to move off campus the second semester of her junior year. Although she had had signed a yearlong housing contract with Residence Life while abroad in Cuba, a representative at the Residence Life Information Desk told here that would be no probelm. “She told me all I had to do was fill out this form and then I could get out of my housing contract,” Daniels said. So she filled out the form and returned it to Residence Life.
Daniels was quickly able to find very convenient and affordable accomidations off campus with her two other roommates, and by mid-semester she had signed the lease, paid the deposit, and moved all her belongings to the new house.
A few weeks later Daniels was asked to speak before a committee and explain why she wanted to live off-campus. “I told them how I hated living on campus, how [RAs] were constantly threatening to call my parents or my roommates parents when I got in trouble.” Daniels thought nothing of the meeting until she received an email from Sandi Bottemiller over winter break. “She told me that my petition to live off campus had been denied. But I had already put a huge deposit on the house and I couldn’t just leave my roommates.”
Daniels sent multiple appeal letters and begged her professors, advisors, and debate coaches to write letters to Residence Life on her behalf. They were all rejected, and Daniels’ parents were forced to take out a loan in order to help Daniels pay for both the empty dorm and the room she was renting off campus.
Later, however, Daniels was informed that another student had moved into the dorm room she had been been paying for.
Daniels will be among the many students who are currently planning to write letters in an information-gathering campaign. In response to a request made by administration officials, the Community Relations Board (CRB) of ASLC has been soliciting student letters regarding their experiences with Residence Life. Students have been asked to write letters or send emails to ASLC. “We need to rethink some old policies,” said Matt Ehrman, Vice President for Community Relations. “People have come to us with problems, and we’re trying to figure out how to ‘operationalize’ them.”
In addition Finke has been going door to door in the Residence Halls asking residents to contribute their thoughts on the matter.
Director of Residence Life Sachiko Vidourek also believed that a letter writing campaign could prove beneficial to Residence Life. “Spring surveys were collected [this week], and combined with these letters, they will provide an even fuller picture of Residence Life.”
ASLC President James Atkin explained that the dean search process was a perfect time to assess the way community life functions. “We want the new dean to have the most information he can. That is why we are looking for concrete examples of community interactions [with Residence Life], both good and bad.”
The dean selection process itself seems to be shedding some light on community tensions between Residence Life and the student body. “The fresh opinions offered by these people from different jobs and schools often contrasted sharply with [current LC policies],” noted Activities Congress representative Brandon Wiebe. “We have many old policies we can’t imagine being changed.”
Activities Congress First Speaker Maura Ross walked away from the dean selection meetings with strong reservations regarding LC community life. “Frankly, dean [candidates] were shocked at the stories students told them,” said Ross. “LC looks like such warm community on the outside,” an image she says contrasted sharply with the impression candidates were getting from the search process.
President-elect Bobby McHugh agreed that there have been some ongoing issues between the student body and Residence Life in the past few years, pointing to alcohol policies and room searches as major points of contention between Residence Life and students. “The perception is that there are ongoing issues not being addressed or being passed off…the perception is that students are not being heard,” said McHugh.
Ehrman and Atkin both spoke of perennial issues regarding Residence Life policies they feel have not been dealt with satisfactorily. Issues regarding meal plans for students in the apartments, move-out dates that are often less than 24 hours after a student’s final, room searches, the fate of the Rusty Nail and the lack of a dedicated music venue – these are all concerns they hope will be addressed in a timely manner. “Every year you hear the same things, but we never get a critical mass of opinions,” Atkin said.
Ross agreed. “Issues that often come to a head at the end of year often fail to get addressed,” she said. “When we’re residents in the halls, we notice all of these things, and then we move off campus and forget them. If we fail to say anything, we leave a whole other group of students who will face the exact same issues.”
Ross explained that the value of the current letter writing campaign is that students’ opinions will be formally documented and passed on to President Tom Hochstettler, Provost Jane Atkinson, and the new dean. “I was shocked that members of the administration said that I was the first person who had ever addressed issues to them,” Ross said.
Atkin echoed these comments. “Many administration officials did not realize until recently how upset many students are with community life, and yet each community forum has been dominated with students expressing their concerns about community on this campus, especially the way Residence Life deals with the community,” he said. He also attributes the schools low retention rate and its low alumni participation to this lack of community.
Activities Congress Music Chair Ben Schifman is in charge of booking bands to play on campus. He typically books the shows in the Rusty Nail, which is under control of Residence Life because it is connected to Copeland Residence Hall. But the Nail’s aesthetics were drastically altered during winter break last year, changes which Schifman contends were not what students wanted. “Residence Life, without consulting anyone from the Activities Congress – or any other student for that matter – painted over student murals that had been there for years,” Schifman said.
Soon thereafter he was informed that he would not be allowed to book shows in the Nail for an indefinite period of time. “We wrote six emails before we got a response, we hand-delivered letters,” Schifman said. “We’re talking dozens of kids trying to find out what was going on, but all we got was silence. Meanwhile we had bands that had contracts with us to perform [in the Nail].”
Eventually Residence Life did communicate with the Activities Congress, but only a few hours before the first scheduled concert; and even then, according to Schifman, “the issue was not resolved until much later.”
Schifman will also be writing a letter about his experiences with Residence Life. “These isolated incidents are not a few failures of an otherwise normally functioning institution,” Ben contended.
Wiebe attributes this incident among others to a pattern of miscommunication between students and Residents Life. However he was quick to add, “the fault of this miscommunication rests on both sides.” Therefore Wiebe is very eager to see the Community Relations Board stepping up its efforts to bridge a perceived communication gap between the two parties.
The letter writing campaign is only one component of a larger strategy to work improve communication with Residence Life. “We want to turn the CRB into a sort of “advisory board” to fufill its community advocate responsibility,” said Ehrman. Though the details are still being ironed-out, Ehrman expressed his hope that the CRB would be successful in creating a committee with both ASLC and Residence Life members. “This is to make more students invested in the policies we all live by,” Ehrman expalined.
Communication has often been strained between ASLC and Residence Life, according to Ross. “Joint programs with Residence Life have been much more difficult to organize than with any other group,” she added. Ross detailed how the Activities Congress was formed with the hope that there would be a partnership between floor RAs and their respective Activities Congress representatives. But as Ross explained, “Residence Life told last year’s Student Government that that couldn’t happen, that that would be too big a burden on RAs.” She sees the plan of a joint committee between Residence Life and ASLC as vital to the health of the LC community. “We need a constant check-in [between Residence Life and ASLC], where problems can be addressed before they blow up, as they’ve continually done in the last four years,” she added.
ASLC will continue accepting letters until the last day of finals. If you are interested in writing a letter, please describe your experience living on campus and interacting with residence life. Letters are to be sent to MSC 140.
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