All Jokes Aside: A 4-year live-in requirement will benefit students, improve campus life

Seth Shanley, Ricky Mulvey
Mon, 29 Jan 2018 19:14:06 +0000
Opinion, all jokes aside, featured, live-in requirement, Off-campus living, ohio state, ohio state monorail, on-campus living, second year transformational experience, step

The monorail will plunge through Ohio Stadium, but don’t worry Buckeye fans, the football team will only need to play at MAPFRE Stadium for one, two or three seasons. Credit: JL Lacar | Managing Editor for Design

Ricky Mulvey and Seth Shanley are members of the Buckeye Standup Comedy Club and joke-loving columnists for The Lantern. Mulvey is a fourth-year in finance and Shanley is a second-year in journalism.

Ohio State students lived in a dark era several years ago, when they were required to live on campus for just one year.

Luckily, Ohio State got with the times and now forces students to live on campus for two years through its signature program STEP — the Second-year Transformational Experience Program.

STEP is a good start, but it does not go far enough. Students should live on campus for all four years.

The reasoning for STEP is that students who live on campus are more likely to participate in on-campus activities than students who live off campus. Living on campus for an “extra year allow(s) for an even richer experience.”

If Ohio State were serious about its logic, it would recognize the necessity of a four-year dorm requirement for all students. This new rule will do for on-campus involvement what the end of World War II did for the United States’ population.

Looks like we’re going to need more on-campus activities for all these involved students!

More students in dorms means more residence-hall memories, more chances to bond and more connections. Move over “quads” and welcome in “hexas.” Imagine the fun of six people in a space designed for four.

Remember when all the grandparents shared a bed at the beginning of “Willy Wonka?” They had fun. A hexa is your golden ticket to an unforgettable college experience. Ignore the cost. This is intimacy.

Making kids live in dorms for four years also will alleviate Ohio State’s problem of house parties, likely lowering the crime rate. If you don’t want students to live on campus for four years, then you don’t care about the community.

Currently, most second-year students are punished by the university if they decide to sin by living off campus. Ohio State stabs their wallet until it bleeds out a noncompliance fee of $6,498 for the year. This is a positive way to encourage on-campus involvement, but it does not go far enough. If someone doesn’t want to live on campus, they must have something wrong in the head. We did calculations, overestimating the cost of living off campus, and found it’s still about $1,200 cheaper per year than living in the dorms, but if students are too poor to live on campus for four years, they don’t have to go to Ohio State.

The four-year live-in requirement will stop irresponsible choices. No college freshman is equipped to decide if they want to live on campus for another school year after living with a roommate and a resident adviser for nine months. That’s not enough time to give on-campus living a chance. Those freshman need another three years, at least, to see if campus living is the right fit.

In our opinion, the real reason Ohio State makes students live in dorms for two years is to repay the folks who loaned the cash to build the new residence halls. That’s why students are forced instead of encouraged to live in dorms for an extra year.

The real reason students need to live on-campus even longer is so there is a steady stream of cash flow to fund projects like an 11-story hotel on High Street with a rooftop view of Thompson Library, a renovation to Ohio Stadium’s luxury boxes, or … now hear us out … a bonafide, electrified six-car monorail! Running north, south, east, and west, the Ohio State Monorail would be the most amazing transportational wonder schools across the Big Ten conference have ever seen.

The Ohio State Monorail will encompass campus with stops at the Schottenstein Center, Ohio Stadium, the Ohio Union, East 17th Ave and Summit Street, and Lane Avenue and North High Street. Students who live in dorms for four years will count themselves lucky that their efforts created something so splendid.

We have the vision. We just need your money. ?

More details will come when we release our full platform to take over the Undergraduate Student Government presidency.

Editor’s Note: This article does not necessarily reflect the views of The Lantern. The views expressed are solely that of the columnists.