More student housing available. Better programming space within the residence halls. More student lounges modeled after the Ignatian Residential College. A better sense of community in Fairfield’s student housing. Getting faculty involved with residence halls by having them live on campus.
Students would not complain about the majority of the things mentioned above. However, the talk of letting faculty live on campus has struck a nerve with some students on Fairfield’s campus.
Nevertheless, all these things are being considered with the implementation of Goal II of the Strategic Plan: Integration of Life and Learning that University President Fr. Jeffrey von Arx, S.J., has been working on since last year.
“What I have in mind is much more using the model of the Ignatian Residential College as a living/learning community which has been so successful for us here at Fairfield,” said Fr. von Arx. “I want to see how we can extend this to more of our students.”
Another goal of the Strategic Plan is to get more housing on campus.
“Our ability to free up more programming space in our existing residence halls will probably depend on our ability to increase our supply of student housing, so we’re looking very seriously at a new student residence hall,” said von Arx.
This new set up in the dorms would ideally involve having faculty move into the residence halls with the students, von Arx said.
“What this would require is making sure that we have more and better programming space in all of our student residence halls as Loyola Hall does now,” said von Arx. “I did talk about trying to get more faculty involved in residence halls, and I mentioned that at Georgetown. When they redid some of their residence halls, they built apartments for faculty, including couples with children.”
Laurie Reynolds, a junior at Georgetown University, commented on families living at Georgetown.
“As far as I know, in the oldest dorm on campus, Copley Hall, a professor lives with his family – a wife and two kids. They live almost in the basement. They’re sort of separated from the rest of the floor, but I know sometimes they have dinners for the other kids on the floor,” she said.
While von Arx would like to introduce faculty into the dorms for that reason- a better connection between faculty and students through things like faculty/student dinners- as a way to foster a better sense of community in the residence halls, not all students are convinced that this is the best way to do it.
“Aren’t there different ways that we could change the dorms rather than adding faculty in there?” asked Molly Forbes ’07. “I think just by adding in some features of Loyola Hall you could foster community between students.”
“I wouldn’t want to live next to a family in a dorm,” said Catherine Peirano ’07. “You’d have to be more considerate than you would if you were living next to other college students.”
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