New Covenant Housing Rules

Of course I may be being paranoid, but I can't help but feel that this is one more way the new folks up at Covenant are well, killing the soul of the college.

I was doing some thinking and I was wondering if developing a strict and systematic method for determining housing is a move to solve housing conflicts that occur every semester. While I don't think this will solve housing conflicts, I also think those housing conflicts are a good thing because it teaches kids how to get along and negotiate when there's strong disagreement.

While really difficult at times on catacombs, I always thought housing signup days were a really growing and developing thing.

Josiah,

I agree with most of the stuff you say here, but I'm gonna have to call you out on this one. Specifically, I'd like to hear more of your thoughts about how the new administration is killing the soul of the college. It's pretty obvious that a lot of changes are taking place up there, but change isn't necessarily bad, and, judging from the changes I've seen, I'd say most of them are pretty good.

Of course, I am biased in a sense--since my wife works there--but I am also both an alumni and still a student at Covenant, and I care about retaining Covenant's unique spirit and purpose. So, partly because I know I am biased, and because most of the news I get about the administrative changes is from a administrative standpoint, I would like to hear your views (and the views of any other current or former Covenant students) on how recent changes are killing the soul of Covenant College.

Because I don't think they are.

Paul, it feels to me like they're trying to make Covenant like every other Christian college, except that its presbyterian. It doesn't feel like the administration is really concerned with being in and encouraging solid relationships with the students, faculty, & staff. It feels like the college is being viewed purely on an institutional & abstract level, and not on a more subjective and personal level. I can't help but feel this flows directly out of the personalities and psychology of those in power. The school seems to be treated as a hybrid business/philosophical problem, and I think that's a scary way to go about running an educational institution. But of course, I'm 24, what the heck do I know. I do know that living with older guys on my hall and getting to live with freshman when I was an upperclassmen was a great and growing experience.

When I start reading about the new housing rules, I feel a small lump of annoyance and anger well up in my adam's apple. I went to a small Christian high school, and they had a lot of rules. I got the feeling that some of the rules were unnecessary and the administration didn't even know why they had them. But it made for a very orderly place. Student's and faculty knew exactly what the rules were (because they told us what they were as often as possible) and if you broke them, You were OUT. No questions asked. (Well, that is not true, they would ask who else was involved in the evil act of breaking the rules). What was so frustrating, was they missed the whole point. Rules shmools. When a 16 year old girls gets pregnant, her church, friends, and school (most of the kids who went to school there, went to church there) should support her. Because it is a big deal to have a baby, and even a bigger one when you are 16. But they would throw a girl like this out of school. Expelled. You messed up, we don't want to have anything to do with you. Great, what was she supposed to do now? One thing that usually happened was she never set foot in a church (any kind of church) again. Which cemented in the administrative's mind that she was never a Christian and should weed her out of the institution.

Ok, so I am going a little far. As you can tell, this is a sensitive subject. I am not saying rules are a bad thing. Because they are not. They can be used as tools for very good things. A tool for submission, structure, love, etc. But, when they stand alone, with no relationship or love behind them, they are destructive. They shun people and reject them, when they are in their greatest need. I am not saying that Covenant is doing this, but I think you are right, Josiah, when you said that Covenant is becoming less and less worried about the people and more interested in being a "successful institution". I think this is very subtle and vague shift of what is important. Because I don't think the higher powers of the school would disagree with any of us about the importance of love and community. They would say it is very important. But when it comes down to it, what I see and what many of us feel on a deep level, is they are preserving the institution, and that is the bottom line. I am concerned, frustrated and sad. 2002 may have been the best year to graduate. As alumni, what is my role in my response to stuff like this?

Wow. After I thought you were joking, with all that about squatting. That was a little convoluted. I'm not exactly sure what the means. Is it like when you pal up with another room and make one room a "sleep" room and another room the "study"/"party" room?

Weird.

I think when we love a place, we want it to stay the same entity that we know and love...I'll confess this. But also, when we see changes like this, it's hard for us to be even a little objective, because we aren't there day in and day out confronted with the problems. We don't even know what it's like to run a college. It must be incredibly difficult. And the people (whom we know as not arbitrarily difficult but are nice people) who came up with these rules probably spent a lot of time trying to come up with what they saw the best solution. If they made a mistake, I'm sure it will show up and they'll learn, but if they haven't, then things will run smoothly. I think it'll be okay. I don't see how this will ruin the soul of the college. Now if they stopped requiring chapel...there's something to really worry about...because we all know what that leads to.... ;)

While I've been concerned about the direction the college has taken in recent years, I feel a good deal differently about this one than you do. John David actually asked me up to campus to advise him on some of these changes, and while I don't agree with all of them, I agree with the rationale.

Here's the thing: The Student Development boys are concerned about the proliferation of all-freshman halls on campus. These halls are the ones with the least tradition, the ones so empty they suck up all the freshmen (think Lawrence for men, Caledon for women). This, John David and the rest feel, is bad for the campus, because it means that freshmen dorm with other freshmen in great, roving packs, and their ethos basically determines the campus ethos. He would like instead to see more upperclassmen interacting with underclassmen, each hall about evenly divided between these two age classes. He wants to see mentoring, discipling communities on each and every hall. He thinks these new rules will create that kind of community. This is not a directive that came down from Neilson. This is a Student Dev idea.

Now, some of these new rules I think are counterproductive, and I told JD so. For example, my biggest concern is not that halls will be split up -- notice that nobody has to leave a hall; they can always stay in their rooms, or be invited to another room on the hall. But my worry is that students who have no close ties to a hall will drift from hall to hall each year, not finding any real community.

On the other hand, I think some of these rules are kinda great, especially the year-long rooming assignments. The idea behind this is to force students to make real commitments to each other, to have them not treat rooming as a matter of convenience. And Josiah, while we might disagree on methodology here, I think we agree that maintaining long-standing commitments to roommates is important.

I suppose my strongest feeling here is that this isn't some new regimentation of the housing code. The housing rules have always been convoluted and arcane; they remain so with these changes. But I admire JD and the rest of StuDev for at least trying to create an ethos of maturity and community on campus. (And for what it's worth, I have it on good authority that if these new rules don't succeed, the administration will be fast to change them.)

And Charity, I think your role as an alumni who lives 13 minutes from campus is to drive up and talk to Student Development about the rule changes. They're eager for imput from former RAs.

Mesh, while that stuff about all freshman dominated halls is scary n' such, or at least, you claim that that's what they're scared about I fail to see how any of these policies actually address that problem. I don't mean FAIL in their addressing of said problem, but actually address SPECIFICALLY that problem.

In fact, to be blunt, what the heck are you talking about?!?

But, your points about year long assignments is a good one, it seems to be a rule that is directed at maturation, refusing to let Freshman room with upperclassmen seems to go in the complete opposite direction. And I'd like to hear their rational for it.

And now, for the current student's perspective (da da da): I agree w/the idea of spreading the freshmen out so they don't dominate any given hall. (I have a feeling we'll see a lot on 1st Belz however, since we're not full right now and we've got a good number of people leaving.) At first, I was worrying that I wouldn't be able to get two more to fill the four-man that I'm in, but that doesn't look like a problem now. The one thing I don't understand is the "no freshmen with upperclassmen" rule. We don't bite; they can learn to live with us.

Being in the trenches of these housing changes I'm struck with the irony. All these coercive new rules are designed in a way to try to legislate community. Some of them I'm in favor of, like the year-long roomates. But the thing that's really funny to me is that Catacombs is really an exception to every one of these things. I just tire of feeling like all the changes here at school isolate us for the school's timbre.

The one rule change that I'm particularly not in favor of is the year long roommate one. Being able to have my roommate move out second semester of my freshman year was probably the only reason I survived that year. I had a roommate who didn't give a flip that I have asthma and that her perfume was making me sick--I literally coughed for two months straight my first semester at Covenant because I couldn't breathe most of the time.

So, unless they have a my-roomate-is-going-to-kill-me/is-making-me-sick exception, at the very least, I think the same roommate for the whole year thing is bad news.

The other rule changes are things that I don't particularly have an opinion about one way or another, though that might be because I never had much of an attachment to any particular hall.

Kathryn, anyone can change rooms at the semester, provided they are willing to pay $50, and I guess if they will find someone else who either doesn't have a roommate or doesn't mind paying $50 to live with them.

I have thought long and hard about what might be killing the soul of Covenant College, and I think I have finally come to the conclusion that the single most contributing factor is that it now costs nearly 25,000 dollars to go there. I know this is changing the subject a bit, but let me assure you, I have thought about all of these issues a great deal, and the one thing that my mind keeps coming back to is that Covenant College is way too expensive. It simply will not have the community atmosphere you guys are idealizing about ever again as long as the prices keep skyrocketing. Please name one school in the history of private schools that you know of that maintained a unique community atmosphere after adding on multimillion dollar buildings throughout the campus and raising the tuition beyond lower middle class accessibility. I cant think of one. All of those places became exactly what you are all talking about: INSTITUTIONS. Covenant used to be a community. At this rate, I dont think it will be for long. I think when a schools student body becomes overwhelmed by one singular economic demographic, particularly the rich kind, what you inevitably end up with is a bunch of isolated individuals clinging to their relatively small group of supporting peers and competing with the rest: yes, just like high school.

ok... now I have some comments. The first is a rather petty point, but a point nonetheless. Everytime I have read through what people have posted as "the new policy" there is something that is not made clear: In order to squat your room, you must FILL the room. You cannot simply decide to stay in your room by yourself to keep the room - you can be bumped out of your room if it is not filled.

Secondly, I have been living with a freshmen roommate for a year now and, it is not a fun experience. I am in a four man room which one might think would make it a reasonable experience. Maybe it is just the personality of my roommate, either way, I was pleased to find out that they eliminated that option. The odd thing is, that when we chose this room last year and only had 3 people, we asked SD if we would get a freshmen. They told us we would most likely because in their opinion "it is the best possible situation for the incoming student." I'm not even going to talk that one out - have fun on your own.

Personally, this new situation doesn't really bug me too much because I going to the apartments, but it certainly has everyone else up in arms about it. I just continually feel that the Administration here doesn't really seem to care for the students that are here, but are more concerned with prospective students. During the preview weekends and Mac Scholars interviews, we were asked to make sacrifices in parking, eating areas, and wer told to be on best behavior. I don't know what you guys think about that, but I felt like "my" campus was being taken away from me and completely given over to the visitors. I'm the one paying the freakin money to them, is it wrong for me to want them to pay a little attention???

Ok, so now I have ranted like everyone else - let me know what you think :)