I miss living on campus. Well, that is not entirely true. I miss certain aspects of living on campus. The ease of access to both food and friends makes an easily compelling argument to live on campus and those are exactly the reasons I can reminisce back to living on campus as opposed to looking back with disdain.
I understand that there are definitely those people out there who revel in the ability to make their own meals; as of yet, I am not one of them.
While I can see the interest in preparing meals it becomes tedious to do so when it conflicts with the other things going on in my life. In the residence halls it is obvious why they have established cafeterias and areas which take care of this task for you.
At my apartment it is just the three of us, so making meals for you or for everyone is not a great concern. When I came to Ball State University, I was placed on a floor of Demotte Hall in the DeHority Complex. There were about 20 of us who all quickly became friends and began doing nearly everything together, including eating. We would all trek to Woodworth or Noyer complexes and have a large meal with all of us. This, obviously, would be ridiculous if we were all asked to prepare meals together.
I realize how fortunate I was to find a group of friends with similar interests and with whom I could have fun and hang out. We spent so much time together that we truly got to know one another, even as we grew to understand ourselves. We created the "D2 Mafia" and had a great time just being ourselves, playing games, watching movies and studying.
This group of friends is one of the greatest things I miss and the easy access to food goes hand in hand with it. However, I moved away from campus just like many others. Although I lasted longer than many here at Ball State (I didn't leave until my senior year here), it is something that I have heard plagues many universities.
I left primarily because of the space issue. It does not take long for one to realize just how little one half of a room is. While the residence halls were nice for the aforementioned reasons of food and friends, sharing one room with another person quickly becomes tiresome. Additionally, the shared bathrooms that Dehority sported at the time that I lived there also left something to be desired: privacy.
Looking back now, one reason I would not want to return to the residence halls is that there are few ways to personalize your space. Like many, we hung strands of Christmas lights around the room, but now that I've been able to have my own furniture, I doubt that I would ever want to go back to living without these aspects of myself. So, the second reason to move away: personalization.
The last reason was that my friends left. It ended up being four of the 20-something people I used to spend time with left in our group. We moved to Baker Hall in Noyer for our third year on campus and shared a suite. No longer did we have the camaraderie and we had little more privacy so the reasons to move to an apartment became overpowering and we left the residence halls for good the following year.
So how can these be corrected? What needs to be done to get people to stay on campus?
Once again, we return to the design-mind: creating multiple solutions. Think out of the box and find something. If you have ideas, feel free to share them with me, you know my e-mail address, so send them on over. I'd be very interested to hear what everyone thinks about this and solutions you have thought of.
In this case, more than any I could imagine, you are in the seat to be designer. As the user of the space and someone who has dealt with the problems it is doubtful you haven't made compromises or thought of hypothetical solutions that could be implemented. What problem have you found and how would you fix it?
If you had more personal space, would you stay on campus? What if they were set up so that each room was individual but there was a communal socializing area? What if there was a small kitchenette? What more do you want? What else do you need? Do you move just so you can take part in adult beverages? Everything falls within the scope of the designer.
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