“Hindsight is 20/20,” the saying goes. It implies that people learn from past experiences. Maybe some administrators will do some reflecting sometime soon.
Last year, the University’s scholarship office ended a long-standing practice of allowing upperclassmen scholarship students to live off-campus. This school year, students would have to seek on-campus housing first. The reason was because, with the University’s financial problems, administration determined that vacancies on campus were leading to a loss of money.
Fast forward to this semester, when 2007 saw the largest class of graduating high school seniors in Florida.
The housing department no longer has vacancies to worry about; in fact, there is a waiting list nearly 400 people long. This forced, or allowed, nearly 200 students, many of them freshmen, to seek off-campus housing.
Meanwhile, many upperclassmen again have to deal with such trivial housing rules as weekly chores and no co-ed visitation.
It just makes sense that freshmen would be given priority when housing is assigned. Every campus is supposed to make such provisions.
Who would choose to deal with the constraints of the housing department when they can live in their own apartment and truly gain the independence college is supposed to be about?
Perhaps administration will take the fallout into consideration before inconvenient decisions are made.
Driadonna Roland for the Editorial Board.