Students Discover Their Housing Options

Students face one of the biggest challenges of their college career when it comes time to research where to live during the coming school year. Although there is no rush and students should take their time deciding where to sign, Off-Campus Life (OCL) hosts a housing fair once a semester as a fun, safe and educational way for students to discover the options available to them.

Cookies, candy, T-shirts, buttons and a million different logoed pens furnished the colorful tablecloths of the organizations at this semester’s fair. One apartment complex was even showing off their school spirit by raffling away a Duke Dog-shaped grill. While students are sometimes brought to the fair by the promise of “free stuff,” they tend to stay for the useful forum that OCL provides.

Elizabeth Rice, a junior Communication Sciences & Disorders major currently living on campus went around to the different booths and came away with a lot to think about. She said, “It was really informative and I’m glad I came. I took a lot of fliers and I’ll be looking at the information a little closer and then I’ll look at their websites.”

OCL Assistant Director, Jeremy Hawkins, says the fair is about “distributing information and asking questions.” Students cannot sign leases at the fair and there are several on-campus organizations invited to the fair to remind students to keep their options open and take their time deciding. It is a great place for students to interact with the different apartment complexes and find their best fit without the pressures that could come with taking an apartment-specific tour or committing to one apartment or set of roommates.

Skyler Freedman, a sophomore nursing major currently living on campus liked that she could see what many different apartments offered all at once. “There’s definitely a lot more options than I thought there were and if the fair didn’t exist I probably wouldn’t have known about them.”

Hawkins hopes that students take away a new “clarity” in their options as well as information about the resources that are available on-campus even to those students who decide to sign with an apartment complex. Finally, he wants students to know that the OCL office “is here to support them.”

The OCL office is located in The Union, Taylor Hall 205 H–L and is open 8 a.m.–5 p.m. Monday through Friday. To contact OCL call (540) 568-6071 or email ocl@jmu.edu.