Many seniors anxiously look forward to cooking, cleaning and rent as marks of adulthood and hope to live off-campus in their last Grinnell year. Usually, some seniors have these hopes unfulfilled by being denied approval to live off campus. But over the last two years, administrators have allowed more students to live off campus, hoping that those seniors left on campus will be more satisfied and that less-crowded dorms will provide greater flexibility in moving students, should the need arise.
According to college administrators, in previous years the college initially approved between 140 and 150 students to live off campus. So far this year, college administrators have extended 162 off-campus approval offers and expect the number to eventually climb over 200. Last year, the college eventually allowed 205 students to live off campus.
One change administrators hope this will make is to resolve the waitlist before room draw. In previous years, according to Student Affairs Technical Assistant Laura Gogg, students have been taken off the waitlist after room draw, which created more work for Student Affairs and ended up giving "very good rooms in very good areas of the campus" to younger students with higher room draw numbers.
Seniors choose rooms before all underclassmen regardless of their room draw numbers. But if a senior is granted approval from the waitlist after room draw, their dorm room is then free to anyone. By granting more initial approvals, administrators hope to lessen the impact of the waitlist on the room draw process.
Student Affairs also hopes that this year's increase in initial off-campus offers would both simplify the room draw process and allow upperclassmen who choose to stay on campus to have a better selection of rooms.
"It wasn't really reflective of how the room draw process should work," said Gogg. "We were wanting to give students who had that good room draw number and were still wanting to live on campus more of an option to get those better rooms." To facilitate the move of more students off campus, Student Affairs posted the approval signup sheet earlier and for a longer period than previously.
Dean of Student Life Jennifer Krohn said that allowing more students to live off campus would cause fewer problems in the future when students have to change rooms because for medical or personal reasons. "We are full at 1300 [students]," said Krohn. "When we are full, we don't have the flexibility to move people around."
Krohn said that while Grinnell is an "intentionally residential" college, the accommodations made for off-campus housing prevent overcrowding in the dorms.
Many students treat off-campus eligibility as a reward of upperclassman status, but this is not always the case, as automatic approvals are rare and every year some seniors are denied.
Automatic approval for living off-campus is only granted to students in four circumstances. If a student has substantial medical documentation that they need special accommodations, they will be offered off-campus living regardless of class status or room draw number. Students who are 22 years old by Sept. 1 of their off-campus year, students living with their parents in Grinnell and students with a child are also granted automatic approval.
Contrary to popular belief, the college does not have a policy to guarantee off-campus approval for married students, though Student Affairs Technical Assistant Laura Gogg said they have been able to extend offers to all such students in the past.
Though a senior's odds of being granted off-campus approval is fairly high in any given year, some students believe a fourth-year student should be guaranteed off-campus approval.
"I think you should be able to live where you want," said SGA President-Elect Neo Morake '09. Morake has petitioned for guaranteed off-campus housing for seniors and believes three years in the dorms earns students the right to live in town if they so choose.
Administrators say that the college's decision to not guarantee off-campus approval for all seniors is due mostly to an interest in keeping Grinnell's on-campus life intact. Student Affairs tries to cap the number of off-campus students at a number that takes into consideration how many students will be abroad that semester and how large they anticipate the incoming class to be.
"It's a residential college, so we like to have the residential halls as full as possible," said Gogg, "but we also want to accommodate those rising seniors, and hopefully the rising juniors as well--to let them have that off-campus experience."
Morake said she believed that off-campus students do not threaten, but rather strengthen Grinnell's community. "Most people live within a three-block radius of the campus, Morake said. "They have activities that happen at their houses. They take classes. They are still interacting with the community on campus."
Despite the debate over automatic approval, some students, like Loosehead Senator and Housing Committee member Anna Gilbert '09, felt that this year's decision process was less contentious than it often is because of the increased approvals. "I don't think its so controversial this year because so many seniors were accepted," said Gilbert.
"This year, we were able to extend offers to all students who had automatic approval and all students who were currently either first-semester fourth years or second-semester third years," said Gogg. All other applicants and those who "considerably" missed the deadline were placed on the waiting list.
