Freshmen walk onto MSU’s enormous campus, bedazzled by the different neighborhoods, buildings, people, environments and classes. By the time they figure out which building is Kedzie Hall and finally learn the names of their neighbors across the hall, they are expected to pick out where to live their sophomore year.
Move-in day is August 25, 2014. Housing sign-up is scheduled to begin the week of October 9 to 14.
Forty-five days — not even halfway through the first semester — are given to students to accustom themselves to an entirely foreign environment, make friends, explore housing options and decide where and with whom they want to live for an entire two semesters the following year.
And this is feasible. Friends can be made easily in close-quartered environments like the dorms. But friends made in the first semester of freshman year, as any college student knows, aren’t necessarily going to be your friends at the end of freshman year, or even by the end of the first semester.
Room assignments and roommates can be changed easily, sure. But 45 days is not enough time to make the housing decision that you’re going to live in the dorms in lieu of an apartment or house for the next year. Coming in to college, students typically have an idea of who their friends are going to be, where they want to live and what their lifestyle is going to be like, but those expectations could be completely turned on their head.
Live On sets up an early sign-up date, and it makes sense — they’ve got a lot of students to process. But the last sign-up date is April 4, six months after the opening day. It would be possible, not to mention much more convenient for students, if Live On moved the first sign-up date to the beginning of second semester, when students have stronger footing in their place at MSU.
Students can wait and sign up for dorms later in the semester because of the wide time frame, but the more desirable dorms fill up almost immediately — the early bird gets the worm.
In addition to having a questionably early move-in date, Live On’s housing contract can only be broken if a student pays 60 percent of the boarding fees, unless the cancellation is requested within 14 days of being signed. Essentially, students have two weeks after signing up to decide if they want to take back the contract without paying a pretty penny.
According to MSU’s website, boarding fees add up to $9,204 under a double room and a Silver Meal Plan for the 2014-15 year. To get out of a contract, it would cost $5,522.40.
Yes, it makes sense to make it difficult to cancel so that Live On can have some stability when working with students. But it does not need to be five-and-a-half-thousand-dollars difficult. It is an inordinate amount of money to pay, especially taking into consideration the costs of rent students are going to take on after breaking the contract.
It is necessary to charge students to void the contract, but this price tag allows only students who are financially secure to genuinely have the option to change their minds after the two-week grace period, without having to worry.
MSU Live On does a good job presiding over the housing options provided by the university, but they need to keep in mind that they may not be giving students enough time to decide where they’re going to live.
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