Many freshmen are left to find new ways to meet friends and get involved in student life when living on campus is not an option.
At the beginning of this year, Alex Barron, a freshman and Tuscaloosa native, faced a difficult choice.
“My parents basically said, ‘You either live with us or we’re not helping you pay for college,’” Barron said.
While some might view such a situation as a slight, he doesn’t seem all that resentful. He can see both sides of the living-with-parents coin.
“If you have parents who are willing to help you, there’s always that safety net,” Barron said. “They’re just right there instead of halfway across the state or, for some of these guys, even the world. But of course, disadvantages are not as much privacy, and they can still use that ‘you live under our roof’ card so you have to play by their rules.”
Barron’s situation isn’t unique among freshmen at the University. As a result of the Housing and Residential Communities Department’s Freshman Residency Program, which began in 2006, all freshmen are required to live in on-campus housing, but some students are exempt if they wish to live with parents, relatives or other legal guardians within a reasonable commuting distance.
Alicia Browne, associate director for information and communication for HRC, said she understands the reasons students have for choosing to live with their families in the Tuscaloosa area.
“We grant exemptions for students who are going to live with their parents and commute,” Browne said. “We also see students who are going to live with older siblings, and I would say that that is becoming more and more common. And sometimes another family member, grandparents, aunts and uncles.”
However, Browne said living on campus is statistically beneficial for students in the long run.
“[The Freshman Residency Program] came after looking at quite a bit of national research that indicated that freshmen who lived on campus were more likely to persist to their sophomore year,” Brown said. “We are finding that as well. The idea of persistence of students in school, and for students to have support, to become engaged on campus, were all important and were the impetus behind the program.”
Morgan Parson, also a Tuscaloosa County native and a freshman majoring in nursing, decided to live at home after being accepted to the University. She cited financial pressures as being the primary motivation for her choice to attend.
“If it weren’t for them giving me a scholarship that was so awesome, I don’t know if I would have come here,” she said.
Freshmen aren’t the only UA students who can be claimed as a deduction. Summer Atkins, a junior majoring in education and longtime Tuscaloosa resident, said it was just convenient to live where her family lives.
“Some students from here had scholarships that covered housing. I did not. It just seemed more convenient financially to stay at home, than to have my parents fork over so much money to live somewhere five to six miles away from my home,” Atkins said.
The Tuscaloosa natives stated no problems with meeting new friends at the University. Parson pledged a Christian sorority, Alpha Delta Chi, in her first months at the Capstone. She also found friends with similar interests in her classes.
“My classes are really good for [meeting new people],” Parson said. “I can find other girls who are studious and care about their grades; the type of people who sit in the front of the classroom with me. Yeah, I’m a nerd. And going through the sorority, I made so many good friends,” Parson said.
Atkins said it was more difficult to meet friends since she did not have roommates in a dorm setting, but not impossible.
“Freshman year, it was an adjustment. I know that a lot of people who were in the dorms got to meet people very quickly, and I didn’t. I just had to adjust and be more intentional with meeting people,” Atkins said.
Barron said he did not have trouble making friends as a freshman, but may have missed out on the typical “college experience.”
“I feel like I can’t go out and, what some college students might say, ‘live life,’” Barron said.
Parson may have been able to make friends organically in class, but when it comes to late night campus activities, she said she feels slighted.
“Whenever I get the Honors College newsletters, and they’re like, ‘Oh yeah, we’re gonna be in the kitchen, cooking this stuff,” I’m jealous. Or, ‘Hey, we’re gonna have this super late-night event, it’s right here at the Ferg,’ and [students on campus] just have to walk 15 minutes from your dorm with half of your friends that came from the same place, that’s really cool. So I feel like I miss out on a lot of that stuff,” Parson said.
