College complaints and conspiracies (#1379)

Topics/tags: Grinnell

Back in the days of the pandemic, Grinnell embraced what President Harris called the THRIVE Principles. As I understand it, they are now part of our Strategic Plan. The first principle is Transparency (or, more precisely, Talk to improve transparency). However, for much of my time at Grinnell, the College has had difficulty being sufficiently transparent.

These days, we’re seeing some significant student and town complaints about transparency and Renfrow Hall (aka the great Grinnell boondoggle [1]). Students have been upset to discover that the number of students permitted to live off campus has decreased significantly. Should they have been surprised? That’s a good question. I certainly heard at multiple planning sessions that one of the primary goals of Renfrow Hall was to decrease the number of students living off campus. But I attended planning sessions. Students and others seem not to have heard or understood that goal. So, while Grinnell’s administration talked to improve transparency, it may not have spoken to the right people. Or maybe it talked about so many things—including many plans about Renfrow that kept changing [2]—that some got lost in the mix.

In any case, students are upset because they made plans assuming that it would be easy to live off campus. That included signing leases before they got approval to live off campus. In the past, it was normal to sign leases almost a year in advance. I’ve heard that students did so to ensure that they got the houses they wanted. However, approval to live off-campus doesn’t happen until mid to late fall. With Renfrow increasing the number of on-campus slots, the number of off-campus slots has decreased, and the odds of getting approved have decreased correspondingly. So students are in the unfortunate state of having signed a lease while being required to live on campus. And some students who have been approved have found that their planned roommates were not approved. It’s been a significant change from a time when most (if not all) seniors and even some juniors were approved.

The landlords are also upset. They had a good thing going. As one noted in an article, students are generally willing to pay more than other renters [3] and are willing to put up with more defects in the house than other renters. Now, many are stuck with places they can’t rent because there’s insufficient demand.

I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. As I said, I heard many comments from the administration that the plan was to reduce the number of students living off campus, perhaps even to eliminate it. And I’m glad that Grinnell permits students to live on campus for all four years of their education; at too many schools, you’re not guaranteed a room after your first year or two and are forced into the community. That raises rents for everyone and can make it difficult for students to find nearby housing. The students I know who live in Renfrow seem to appreciate it.

However, the College failed to communicate this goal appropriately. I also know the value of living off campus; both of my offspring who attended Grinnell lived off campus in what we called Townie House [4]. I’m not sure that Renfrow gives the same benefits. Perhaps the affinity houses do.

I wish we’d communicated the effects of Renfrow better, or that students had done the analysis themselves. I hope things will improve next year: Students will know about the changes, and the Housing Office will allow students to apply in groups rather than individually.

This year? Things are complicated. I hope that folks figure things out. New roommates can be new friends, right?

I wonder if anyone has considered the effects on what we might call team houses, the places where some members of, say, the Women’s Soccer Team, live together. The legendary Slum [5] is gone, but presumably there are others. How important are those to team culture, to campus culture?

I’ve also heard an interesting conspiracy theory. A few years ago, Grinnell cracked down on on-campus drinking, restricting when and where students could include alcohol in formal and informal on-campus activities. The associated policies had many effects, including moving some significant events off campus. For example, the 10/10 party could no longer be held on campus [6], but got picked up by students living in town.

What’s the conspiracy? Well, if there isn’t off-campus housing, there’s no longer off-campus drinking. If the College has restricted on-campus events and eliminated off-campus options, students have few options, at least in theory.

Is that the reason for the development of Renfrow? I don’t think so. I heard sincere concern from administrators about the effects of off-campus housing on things like food insecurity. I also know that administrators worried about how parents would feel about some of the student housing in town [7]. Many people were also deeply enamored of the opportunities Renfrow would supposedly have to improve Town-Gown relationships, even though the details of how it would achieve that were never completely clear [8,9]. President Kington also wanted to leave a mark on campus.

Still, you can understand how administrators would also appreciate the reduction in opportunities for alcohol consumption. And, as a few people have suggested, the College still gets blamed when things happen off campus. It has reasons to be concerned.

I have my own theory. Students automatically get permission to live off campus if they are married. Grinnell likes to promote how frequently Grinnellians marry other Grinnellians. Perhaps this is a ploy to increase that frequency.

Postscript: There was a student complaint session last Tuesday. I wanted to attend, but others convinced me that I shouldn’t. I wonder how it went.

[1] I appreciate many of the goals that Renfrow was supposed to represent. But it cost over $60 million. With 120 beds, that’s half a million per bed. You can buy two nice houses in Grinnell for $50,000. And, like many starchitect-designed buildings, it didn’t consider everyday issues, such as how much dust would come from the concrete walls.

[2] What happened to the pyramid? Did the Illuminati on the Board complain?

[3] High off-campus rents are still cheaper than dorm rates. And, for people used to living almost anywhere else in the country, they are incredibly affordable.

[4] They and their roommates came from the town of Grinnell. This was back in the day when we had large groups of local Grinnellians attend Grinnell.

[5] The long-term home of the Men’s Cross-Country team.

[6] Whatever happened to the College’s alcohol-free alternative to 10/10? I should ask someone in Student Affairs.

[7] I lived off-campus in Chicago. I’m pretty sure it was worse. I still recall checking out one apartment in which we scared a swarm of cockroaches off the kitchen table when we turned on the lights. And even when we lived in a nicer building, we still had the occasional problem.

[8] I still hear people wondering what happened to the shops that were supposed to be on the first floor.

[9] As I said before, there were enough things said about Renfrow and changes made to the plans that it’s understandable that students didn’t follow or comprehend everything.

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