Column: Off-campus student needs require redress

By Stephanie Jennings     5/15/08 7:00pm

During my time at Rice, I was one of "those people." I lived on-campus for one year, moved off-campus for sophomore year and never came back. I went pretty deep OC my junior and senior years. Spending lots of dead time in the Rice Memorial Center during my three years off-campus has taught me one thing: Rice needs better resources for off-campus students. The first thing that can be improved is food options. Food is expensive - I wince every time I see my total at the grocery store - but additional food options on-campus could help to offset this expense. Currently, if you do not have any sort of off-campus meal plan, your options are to pack a meal, eat at 13th Street, Willy's Pub or Sammy's Cafe or convince a friend with a meal plan to steal food for you from the servery. And even if you do have an off-campus meal plan, it is probably somewhat impractical as the meals do not carry over from week to week. While 13th Street is a big improvement over the sub par Subway that formerly occupied the space in the RMC, there are only so many $5 turkey sandwiches and $5.95 sushi boxes one can take. While Rice cannot realistically support multiple fast-food chain restaurants in its student center like the University of Texas does, Rice needs another food alternative aside from current businesses or the slightly frightening frozen food vending machine in the RMC basement.

Secondly, more resources are needed for housing searches. Yes, college is a time of transition to adulthood, including learning how to do such adult things as find housing, but realistically, the average 19- or 20-year-old moving off-campus for the first time knows little-to-nothing about what to look for in an apartment or what's around campus. If Housing and Dining insists on kicking students off-campus, then why does it provide so few off-campus housing resources to these students? Yes, there are resources such as the Off-Campus Housing Guide or college masters who assist students in housing searches, but it seems that the apartment search is left largely up to the student's blind luck. Houston itself is affordable compared to many other large cities, but the area around Rice is not. This gives students a bit of a toss-up in housing choices - live nearby campus and overpay or live further out somewhere more affordable in an area of questionable safety?

Finally, Rice should take a greater concern for off-campus students' safety. Given increases in crime on-campus and off, student safety is of utmost importance. However, there are not many late-night options. If it is 3 a.m., and it has been a long night in Fondren, you are kind of tired and want to head home. But your options are to ask a friend to sleep on her futon, find a random spot to sleep on-campus or drive home late at night. This should be an easy problem to fix. We do not have to go as far as asking for a Rice University Police Department off-campus escort, but perhaps we could do something as simple as compiling late-night carpool lists or even putting a few extra beds in the OC lounges (or revitalizing the OC lounges in some colleges' cases).

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Obviously, I do not despise living off-campus or I would have moved back on-campus at some point. However, there are things Rice can do to improve the situation for off-campus students. We are a vital part of the Rice community whose needs can be better addressed.

Stephanie Jennings is a Sid Richardson College senior.

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