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There are without a doubt certain limits that must be accepted if a student chooses to live on campus. But the claustrophobia of dorm rooms can be altered and the sub par dining hall food can be avoided; neither these or other drawbacks can dilute the many benefits of living within a college community.

In fact community itself is one of the benefits. Living on campus, in the same buildings with people who are in classes with you is ideal for developing and nurturing friendships with people who might think the way you do and understand the collegiate pressures you are both dealing with.

Living on the same campus with classmates also makes it easier to meet up with them on a the spur of moment when a presentation needs to be thrown together. Just be forgiving of your off-campus classmates, whose schedule might be harder to work around than your friends who live one floor down from you.

An on-campus life also means a student who spends most of their time walking in and out of the student union, classroom buildings and other people's dorm rooms or living rooms is more likely to know about and participate in on-campus activities.

The time and location of the latest concert, frat party or play audition tends to be more accessible information when you see the posters on every wall. A ten pm play practice is no problem when the theatre building is five minutes or less from your dorm, neither is working in the newsroom until midnight.

The information about campus happenings are often not just gotten from posters, but from chatter within the campus community that off-campus students might not be privy to. In my recent alma mater our convenience store in the campus center became the American college equivalent of a market in France, where the whole town would come down to the little store to pick out food for the day (only instead of baguettes it was red bull and ramen) and talk about the events of the day and gossip about everyone we knowactually that got old pretty quick. But participating in the casual, easy exchange of information is one of the benefits of being part of the community.

On campus living also gives a student a certain amount of protection from the inevitable bureaucratic inconvenience of college life. Its much easier to track down a professor for permission to add their class, or scamper over to buy a book at the bookstore and go home to do the homework for the second class if home and bookstore are two minutes rather than an hour away.

Learn more about this author, Holly Huffstutler.
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