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A Different Approach

I know my letter is only one of a flood The Daily Free Press is receiving in response to Chancellor John Silber’s comments in Monday’s issue of the paper. Most of them are angry, a handful accusing to insulting. These are the inflammatory letters, the ones that get printed and the ones that get responded to. But they do little to increase the student body’s credibility in the mind of the administration. One look at a letter such as Jeff Lamoreaux’s, with its thickly laden sarcasm, and the administration is all the more likely to brush us off as immature and spoiled. Which is not to say such a letter does not have its place — but I think a slightly different tack is needed. So if you are reading, Chancellor Silber, I encourage you to consider my comments as a new argument and one worth considering, for it is one I have not seen published or stated in my four years at Boston University.

My argument has to do with the idea of “campus life.” Chancellor Silber states adults must find their own “trysting places,” as he puts it. However, adults (meaning, in this case, working non-students) have one thing we apparently do not have: a place to live. We have dormitory rooms, but they seem to be defined as a place to sleep and a place to study only. A real “place to live,” whether it is owned or rented by its occupant, is a space where the various activities of daily life can be carried out. These include social activities, including friendship- and romance-based meetings, and they include conflicts, which are inevitable in any aspect of life. If we are not allowed to exercise judgement on who we invite into our “living space” and when, we do not have a “residence life” at all: simply a bunker to rest in. This attitude toward students in dormitories is echoed not just in the Guest Policy, but in a myriad of other policies that discourage social activities even among dorm participants: the example of the dining halls’ “no eat, no entry” policy comes to mind. The dining hall is an important place for study, social gatherings and to build relationships with roommates and floormates. But with students reluctant to give up one of their meals, the dining hall becomes a lonely place where I am often reduced to eating alone in silence. It is policies like this that make “residence life” an oxymoron at Boston University.

I am not, of course, suggesting that living in a dormitory should be equivalent to living in an apartment. Dormitory life should act as a transition from living at home, where the basic aspects of life are taken care of by parents or guardians, to living “in the real world,” where one must take care of even the most basic needs oneself. To that end, dormitory life should provide the basic outline of “real-world” living, but with extra support structures added in. As students and “adults-in-training,” so to speak, we must learn to make decisions as to how to take care of our living spaces and our living partners. If there is a conflict, however, we are blessed with the help of an authoritative third party, the Resident Assistant, whose job it is to help us sort out such conflicts. There are no RAs in apartments and homes, no willing authority who can help us out. But if our decisions are made for us by the administration, where is our middle step between living at home and living on our own? The University is responsible for providing that. If they do not, again, we cannot call it true “residence life.”

To sum up, we are not asking for heart-shaped bathtubs. We are asking for the chance to face some of the issues that adults must face, and if necessary, to depend on the excellent support systems already in place. By denying us the chance to make decisions and deal with conflicts that will confront us when we graduate, the University is not helping us become adults — it is keeping us as children. I urge Chancellor Silber and the administration of Boston University to help us put the “life” back in “residence life.”

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