While becoming an upperclassman, one begins learning valuable lessons around ASU. You find out cold pizza breakfasts really aren't all that great, ramen noodles can keep you alive, studying is helpful, and that ASU doesn't really care about you at all. Well, at least not Residential Life.
While knowing they would be kicked out of their dorms and replaced with freshmen, Cholla Hall residents found out a few weeks ago where Residential Life would be putting them -- the Commons on Apache. Of course, this is only for the next two years.
In a two-year lease that the Arizona Board of Regents approved last month, upperclassmen will now reside in the Commons on Apache. (Of course that'll change to the ever-so-ingeniously named Commons at ASU. Catchy.) The switch comes as an attempt to offer more beds for freshmen while waiting on the new McAllister Academic Village to be built. Building a new freshman center on campus takes time, after all.
And once it's done, freshmen will be moved into the new facility, and upperclassmen will move back into Cholla Hall. It makes perfect sense.
The freshman year is a vital one in determining a student's future at a university. And by creating a sense of community at the college, students are statistically more likely to stick around. This, paired with ASU's Freshman Year Experience, which ranked as the No. 23 academic program for first-year students in the nation in 2003 by U.S. News and World Report, spotlights a necessary and imperative focus on keeping our students here. More student retention -- sounds great. But what about the rest of us?
While the campus shows ASU cares to keep us here the second year, pushing students out of what has become their home screams out just the opposite. After all, many students prefer to live on campus. Cholla Hall has become home to these students -- a community with a unique atmosphere.
As computer systems engineering senior Camay Tang says about the switch, "What's the point? They should just have us live here. The freshmen got their North Village, and we have our Cholla." Tang, while deciding to remain on campus next year, is opting out of the Commons and moving into a single-occupancy unit (not by choice) in Ocotillo.
Like many others, the move to the Commons is not one she's looking forward to. And of all places to push students, why the Commons?
The Commons on Apache doesn't exactly have the ideal dorm atmosphere to say the least. Undeclared freshman Breanne Nye and current resident at the Commons noted, "On the weekends people come here to party. It's like any other college place -- it's like the Village."
Her roommate, undeclared freshman Caitlin Fitzgerald described, "Since it's so small you can shout 'hi' across the balcony."
And as Nye remarked, "We like it so much here that we rarely go to the bars and stuff." That doesn't sound like the typical dorm experience.
Granted, that can be changed. In addition to "perhaps more Sparkys in the area," as the current general manager of the Commons on Apache Kristopher Kelley noted, changes will be made with Residential Life taking over.
But one thing they can't change is proximity. For many students, being close to their classes is the main reason they choose to live on campus. Cholla Hall is closer to campus than the Commons. As Tang joked, "I'm lazy, and it's too far away." And as silly as that sounds, it makes sense. Students live on campus for multiple reasons. But once those reasons start disappearing, there becomes little incentive.
Yes, the amenities are nicer. And students will now have their own washers and dryers (a highly prized commodity, of course). But it's not Cholla Hall.
Rosie Cisneros is a journalism sophomore. Reach her at rosie.cisneros@asu.edu.
