Trustees hear student housing plans
COLUMBUS – Increasing student housing capacity overall and decreasing density inside residence halls are top priorities for The Ohio State University Office of Student Affairs, the university’s Board of Trustees was told Friday (2/4). Trustees heard an update on student housing plans for the next few years from Vice President for Student Affairs William Hall and Associate Vice Presidents William Schwartz and Richard Hollingsworth, who discussed goals for undergraduate housing on the Columbus and regional campuses through 2008.
According to Schwartz, the university hopes to add 1,000 more beds to its student housing inventory. In addition to meeting demand from students for safe, convenient, supervised housing, university-operated student housing offers demonstrated academic benefits, Schwartz said, citing higher graduation rates, shorter time to completion of degree, higher grades, more involvement in university activities, greater contact with faculty, and greater value for diversity and respect for others.
Residence halls are self-supporting. Construction is financed by issuing bonds, which are retired with income generated by operation of the halls.
About 9,000 of the 36,000 undergraduates at the Columbus campus live in residence halls, with 2,000 of them in four-person rooms. Student Affairs is recommending conversion of several existing spaces to student housing to both increase capacity and decrease density. Schwartz said returning floors 4 through14 of Lincoln Tower as well as all of Archer House to their original function as student residences and modifying former hotel space in the Fawcett Center would generate between 758 and 838 new beds at a cost of about $25 million. This translates into about $30,000 per bed, compared with $65,000 a bed for new construction. Offices currently located in these spaces would move to other locations on or near the campus.
Hollingsworth outlined several strategies to improve housing in the social fraternity and sorority system. Leasing, purchasing and management arrangements between the university and the chapters have helped strengthen the Greek system by improving living standards, upgrading safety, supporting personal development and academic achievement, and stabilizing chapters’ finances.
Ohio State leases and manages four fraternity houses and owns and manages one. As requested by Greek alumni boards, the goal is to lease two to four additional fraternity properties each year and to pursue purchase of one to four additional properties in the neighborhood.
Trustees were also briefed on the housing situations on the university’s regional campuses. In the past two years, Ohio State has purchased apartments at the Newark and Mansfield campuses. Each of these 180-student complexes is operated by Student Affairs as university housing. Plans had been advanced to construct 200- to 300-bed complexes at Marion and Lima, but those plans are now on hold pending additional enrollment studies. Private developers have expressed interest in constructing housing to serve these campuses.
In summary, Hall told the trustees that current plans focus on undergraduate and fraternity/sorority housing through enhancement of existing facilities. However, he said, there is widespread interest in longer-term plans to create other living-learning communities. For instance, the Moritz College of Law is planning a residential environment for its students in the new Gateway development, and a similar community for the Fisher College of Business is under investigation. There is interest in enhanced communities for graduate students, students with families, and faculty, staff and older adults who desire a life-long connection with the university.
