By The Journalism 320 class
Although Lake Forest College has recently altered its roommate and housing policies, many students believe Residence Life should reverse this decision. Previously, students were allowed to request any room size they desired as long as they filed their request in tandem with whomever their intended roommate was.
For example, if a group of three wished to occupy a room, but only quads were available, they could do so as the remaining slot would either be left vacant or be filled randomly by the College. However, now student groups that do not have the exact number of occupants to match a room’s size must either find an extra roommate, cut someone out, or risk being broken up entirely just to live on campus.
Consequently, present students whose residential experiences were marred by the housing congestion on campus in the fall 2022 semester could again face disappointment with the sudden restriction of future rooming options. The issue is especially problematic given that overcrowding is a common concern on campus.
In the 2021-22 school year, Lake Forest College made history by admitting its largest incoming class of 440 students. The following year, the College yet again broke the record for the largest incoming class, with 456 first-year students. With classes of these sizes, the College saw its admissions rate rise from a consistent figure of around 50% to 64% for the 2022-2023 academic year. This was likely due to an effort to curb financial deficits caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Due to these influxes, Residence Life experienced issues with providing adequate housing for a variety of reasons. Notably, incoming first-year students still had to have rooms allocated to them despite most of the housing being filled by current students. And, many seniors typically choose to live on campus their final year which further limits housing options for students with fewer credits.
Also, as a result of the overpopulation on campus, some triples were converted into quads, singles across campus were made to accommodate two people, and some first-year students lived in packed lounges without windows. For example, a group of nine first-year students was placed in a former basement lounge with a singular bathroom.
In response, Residence Life created the new current housing policy to combat future housing issues. However, these issues lie within student admissions and should be addressed at the source, rather than fixed with Band-Aid solutions to meet the bare minimum. Tuition prices recently increased by .08 percent for all students, which brings the total price of attendance with on-campus living and without scholarships or grants to $64,800 total. The average cost for tuition and fees for a private university in the United States in 2022-2023 was $39,723 according to US News.
With the new housing policy, students are stressed out over what to do. Friend groups may be divided in order for the dorms to be adequately filled, and those without roommate groups may be forced to form them, which can be awkward and socially daunting. According to the Lake Forest College Residence Life Instagram page during the 2023-2024 housing selection, single rooms were all filled within the first day of access, and all remaining rooms after the first day were quads. That story post was followed up by another which stated that students who could not confine to those quads would not have housing options on campus.
Having to potentially pay for a full-priced education well above the national average to live in a room that does not cater to a person’s individual needs is outrageous and disappointing.
Current students are now directly suffering the consequences of over-admission, and their concerns are seemingly ignored entirely by the decision to modify the housing process. The admissions office and Residence Life should focus on attending to the needs of the current student body, rather than growing the student population of a community already at its maximum capacity.
While the attempt to properly fill all available spaces is understandable from a financial standpoint, there is room for improvement to make current students feel comfortable. There are a few options the College can do to attempt to fix this issue. The College should introduce a service to allow students to conduct interviews with potential roommates, as it can help alleviate these uncomfortable feelings and let students have control over their roommates. For incoming first-year students, a roommate questionnaire is available to them, and this should be expanded for use by upper-classmen, as well.
A cutoff deadline could work to manage student placement as well; however, letting students have a say in their housing allows for feelings of safety and comfort in their place of residence. Students that cannot or will not find a roommate by the deadline may be placed into a quad as a way of keeping the original system but filling spaces more effectively.
In fairness, the College has made its rules about students living off of campus more flexible in order to free up space on campus. Previously, students were required to have senior-level credits to live off campus or meet criteria such as being married or a minimum of 23 years old. Now, junior-level students can live off campus if their request to do so is granted. It is unknown how many junior-level students will be allowed to live off of campus, but this decision is not expected to be successful according to the student body. This is because living off campus is expensive and oftentimes, the options within a student’s budget are too far away from campus to be reasonable.
This also relates to the long-term parking problem at Lake Forest College, as many students and even professors are sometimes unable to find parking in order to get to class. Increasing the number of off-campus students will only increase the number of cars on campus, making the campus parking lots even more congested.
In reflection, Lake Forest College should not have changed its previous rooming policies, seeing as its current counterpart provides a massive inconvenience for students and punishes them for the actions of the admissions office. Furthermore, an entirely new policy does not need to be created, as simply reworking the current system would provide more stability for students in the long term for when the next first-year class arrives. The fall 2022 semester should serve as a lesson to the College, rather than a calling for a clean slate.
