New Residence Hall Policy to be Piloted Over Upcoming Spring Break

This upcoming spring break, Residence Life is trying out a new policy that would allow students to stay on campus during the week. Students who do not have a school-related reason to stay on campus over break now have the opportunity to pay $125 per week to stay on campus. The idea behind this new policy is to allow students who have a job near campus to continue working over break, and for students who usually need to purchase an expensive plane ticket to get home for the break to pay a small fee to stay here instead.

The reason behind the fee, the director of housing, Troy Ross, says, “In order to allow students to stay over break, we needed to increase our staff over break — there is a cost associated with the increase of staffing. We had to find CAs that wanted to stay over break and pay them to be here.” 

Ross said the only reason a student would not be allowed to stay on campus over break is if the student had been found responsible for any serious student conduct violations. Ross also stated that a student does need to have a valid reason for requesting to stay. If students have any questions about staying on campus over break, Ross would like them to contact him directly. He also wants it to be known that this is a pilot policy. 

Ben Myers, a CA who is going to be staying over break, said, “What prompted me to stay over break was the financial advantages of staying here instead of going home to Illinois. I also feel that this is the reason why it’s so advantageous for some residents to stay over break.” 

In the past, the policy on allowing residents to stay on campus over break used to be far more lenient, but following an incident where a resident staying over break was injured, Residence Life decided to change the policy limiting which residents can stay over break.