As our residence halls close and we head home for winter break, it’s hard to ignore how Trinity’s housing requirement continually fails students. Besides those lucky few who make it into the apartment-style City Vista, all students living on lower-campus must find their way back home for the holidays.
While students can stay on campus, it’s definitely not cheap. After filling out a form and working with Residential Life, those needing housing over winter break can opt into paying for access to a dorm. This dorm may not be their own, and dining services will not be open, but hey, at least there is somewhere to stay.
One international student I spoke with told me he had to pay over $800 to stay in his dorm for winter break. He explained that while he couldn’t afford this fee, paying for international flights during the holidays would cost even more.
In all fairness, this policy of closing dorms and asking for payment over breaks isn’t unheard of. In fact, for most schools nationwide, it’s standard practice. Trinity, however, isn’t standard. Our three-year living requirement complicates breaks, and it’s time our housing reflected that.
Consider this: the university requires students to pay for on-campus housing for three years. Trinity’s cost of housing is comparable to other options near campus, yet off-campus living is only available to seniors. Based on when dorms have closed for winter and summer breaks over past academic years, students generally do not have access to their dorms for over one-third of the year.
In other words, the university mandates we pay around the same amount to live in a dorm for two-thirds of the year than if we lived in an apartment off-campus with a year-long lease. Closing dorms a third of the year unfairly assumes that all students can and want to go home or can afford to pay more to stay.
I spoke with two out-of-state and one international student who have stayed or are currently staying on campus over winter break. They echoed that tuition and housing are already expensive enough. Paying for a holiday-season flight to be home for a month is sometimes just not possible.
For others, travel may not be an issue. However, many students have jobs and internships that won’t allow them an entire month off just because the semester ended. Closing dorms means losing the chance for students to choose for themselves how much to work versus spend time at home.
Summer break is a whole other challenge when it comes to jobs and internships. Instead of looking for long-term opportunities in San Antonio, helping pop the Trinity bubble and gain valuable experience, Trinity students first need to figure out where they will live once the dorms close for the summer months.
And that’s just one piece of the puzzle. Keep in mind that not all students want to go home for breaks. In reality, we all come from diverse and complicated backgrounds, and requiring students to go home or pay to stay leaves those from unsafe, unstable or abusive living situations with few options of where to go.
Look, I get it. Trinity has a plethora of reasons to close dorms over the break. Closures save money, provide time to respond to maintenance issues and help keep the campus secure. But with the option to pay to stay on campus, maintenance and security seem less important than the all powerful motivator of money.
But money as an explanation doesn’t exactly hold up. Why should Trinity’s leadership cozy up for the holidays in their multi-million dollar Oakmont homes, while students must scrounge massive amounts of money to afford access to dorm housing they have already paid for?
It seems bold to assume that all students are both willing and able to leave the dorm they spend thousands to occupy. My primary contention is this: If we are required to pay for on-campus housing for three years and cannot choose other options, then housing should meet all of our needs. These needs, based on the amount we pay, the other would-be options around campus and our diverse student body, include housing during breaks for no additional cost.
I see no reason why opening the dorms for current students over break would hurt the community building goals at the root of our on-campus living requirement. And while that’s not to say that changing this policy would be easy or costless, it is the price the university must pay for requiring students to live on campus for three years.