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The Daily OrangeDying breed: South Campus family housing to cease at end of academic year
By Uyen Nguyen
Posted: 10/23/08, 11:42 PM EST Section: Feature
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Families used to take turns dropping off and picking up kids from day care, she said. Or they would watch children for one another. That support system that had once been there is now gone, she said.
Now her neighbors are all undergraduates. There is only one other family living on South Campus.
"My daughter was the only kid on the playground," she said.
Desjardins, a doctoral student in the audiology program at Syracuse University, is living in one of the two last family housing units on campus.
As soon as these two families finish their degrees, families will no longer be allowed to occupy campus housing.
"I'm extremely devastated about the whole thing because we had originally come here
because they had the family housing," Desjardins said.
Desjardins, 31, currently lives in an apartment on Slocum. But in November, her family will be moving off campus as well. The move is in order to find a more hospitable environment for her family, she said.
Undergraduates predominantly occupy her apartment complex. It's an uncomfortable situation to place graduate students and undergraduate students together, she said. There are huge differences in age as well as lifestyle, she added.
"There's no way we could live here with our daughter," she said.
The first year that her family came to the school, they were admitted into the family
housing, but were never told of the intent to discontinue the program, according to Desjardins.
Toward the end of her first year, rumors began to circulate that family housing was no longer going to be offered, she said. Many families opted to leave at that point. Her family decided to stay.
In her first year here at SU, there were around 20 families on South Campus.
South Campus had once been all family housing, said Kristopher Millett, the associate director of South Campus Housing.
The apartments on South Campus were actually designed in a way to accommodate families.
"That's why there is the discrepancy in size of the bedrooms," Millett said. "Otherwise, there wouldn't be differences."
But with the increasing undergraduate population in recent years, there is a change in the climate of the college, he said.
Family housing on campus began after World War II, said Gillian Budman, the associate director for North and South Campus Housing.
Viewing Comments 1 - 2 of 2
Lakisha Rainey
posted 7/09/09 @ 7:29 PM EST
I have never lived on campus with my family. But I am looking for a college that does, so if you do find one can you please notify me?
Dennis
posted 7/19/09 @ 12:47 PM EST
Its all about the money...su does not give a flying fuck about these families when they squeeze more money out of the undergrads...they will posture, lament about the family, but its all words they don't care
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