Opinion: Dorm life sure has changed in recent years

Talk about it

I’m not that old, but I’m old enough to remember when going to college meant roughing it.

When I moved into Mathews Hall at South Dakota State University in the fall of 1997, my room was sparsely furnished. In fact, it wasn’t all that different from a prison cell.

As I recall, the room was tiny, with cold, tile floors and concrete-block walls. It had no air-conditioning and was outfitted with only the basics for its two occupants: two beds, two sets of drawers, two desks and a phone hookup. Our one luxury was cable TV, which I think we splurged for out of our own pockets. There was one laundry facility and one kitchen for the entire building. Both were in the basement.

Just 13 years later, things have changed dramatically. Going to SDSU these days appears to me like attending a four- (or five- or six-) year-long business convention at a luxury resort.

Take, for example, the new residence halls that SDSU will open this fall. They will have room for about 400 students but will be arranged in “pods” of about 35, so that students can form their own small communities. Every floor — yes, every floor — will have its own laundry facility, full kitchen, fireplace and recreation space. All floors will be served by an elevator, and there will be air-conditioning.

For today’s SDSU students, the new dorms are only one example of how college life has been stunningly altered. When a contingent of SDSU officials was here in Mitchell recently to speak with The Daily Republic’s editorial board, those officials said $100 million has been spent on new construction projects at SDSU since David Chicoine became the university’s president in 2007.

Those projects include new dorms, a Wellness Center, the Dykhouse Student-Athlete Center, the Equestrian Center, the Seed Technology Laboratory, the Innovation Center, the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Building, and the Avera Health and Science Center, to name a few. Future plans include a new football stadium and a complete redevelopment of the campus’ northwest quadrant.

What all this means is that many students live, study and play in an environment that borders on opulent. When I asked Chicoine why college living has changed so much, he said it’s due to changing expectations. Increasingly, the students who come to SDSU have been given every imaginable luxury by their parents, and they expect more of the same at college. To keep those students from going somewhere else, colleges have to improve their campuses.

“It’s what they grew up with,” Chicoine said. “We have students who come to us who’ve not only never shared a bedroom, but they’ve never shared a bathroom. And then when we show them the ’60sstyle, gang-shower dormitories that are 40 years old, the students don’t necessarily get turned off by it, because it’s a new experience for them. But mother usually says, ‘Don’t you have something else?’ ”

As a proud Jackrabbit, I’m pleased to see my alma mater growing and evolving. But I wonder how this lavish lifestyle is affecting the students who, for the most part, have done nothing at all to earn it. In a world where rewards come before work, what will the consequences be?

The real world, after all, is not like college. Whereas college presidents these days go to great lengths to see that students’ every material wish is granted, many real-world bosses go to great lengths to reduce their overhead to the lowest possible level. Students who leave the posh confines of the modern university, with its coffee shops and fitness centers and luxury apartments, will likely be shocked when they step into the real world of layoffs and mortgage foreclosures.

Yet, if those students have been trained to expect a high standard of living without doing anything to earn it, they’ll likely continue to spend and spend and spend in pursuit of that high standard. And because colleges are facing higher and higher costs to improve their campuses, those same students will probably be saddled with ever-higher levels of studentloan debt.

I guess I sound a little old and bitter. Maybe I’m just jealous that I didn’t get to attend college during the era of opulence. That could be part of it. Mostly, though, I think I was lucky to attend college at a time when the rewards came after, and not before, the conferring of a degree.

Tags: seth tupper, opinion