This week, students who have credit hours starting at 48 or more by the end of the spring semester will be allowed to apply to live off-campus next year in order to move to a new stage of college life.
Jean Wilwohl, associate director of Occupancy Management, said, “Starting Monday of next week to Friday of next week at five o’clock, we will be conducting the off-campus release application process. The form will be available on our website starting Monday. It is a PDF document, so the student just prints it out. There are a few places to initial and sign, and then they bring the application here to the [Residential and Commuter Life] (RCL) office.”
Following that week of application, the students who applied will find out whether they are re- leased from living on campus on Monday, Feb. 4.
Students who are released to live off-campus for the following year will attend an hour-and-a- half orientation where students will learn about the many options that are available to them as well as their rights and responsibilities to live off- campus.
Wilwohl said, “Some of the things they’ll talk about will be parking, how to sign up for trash pick up, how to handle disputes with landlords, what resources are available [to the students], things of that nature, just to get our students ready for the independence of living off campus.”
Once released, students can get leases for housing around the town of Farmville, using companies like Walk2Campus, Poplar Forest Apart- ments, Green Properties or by going through independent real estate brokers.
According to Wilwohl, “In the past five to six years, everybody who has met the credit requirement who has applied for release has been released to live off-campus. I anticipate that, this year, our numbers will be fairly consistent, as they've been every year, as far as the number of people asking to be released."
She said, “I don’t anticipate that we would have to deny anyone who meets the credit requirement for release. If there was ever a year where we couldn’t release everyone, we would rank them by their earned credit hours. Seniors would be released first before juniors before sophomores.”
Usually, students in the numbers ranging from 300 to 400 have applied to live off-campus each year, low numbers for a school that has a student population of 4,834, while 4,355 of those are undergraduate students.
“We still have about 50 percent of our senior class living with us in our housing,” said Wil- wohl. “So it’s not that every senior is asking to be released. You know there will be some seniors that will. There will be some juniors that will. There will be some higher credit sophomores that meet the 48 [credit requirement] that will ask to be released. We still have a very high percentage of our students that still–even though they could apply for off-campus release–want to live in Longwood managed housing, either on the main campus or in one of our three apartment communities that we manage.”
One last thing for all the students who haven’t yet decided whether or not they want to live off- campus, living off-campus means no hassle to sign up for a dorm. Just a thought to consider as the memory of last year’s dorm sign up floats through your head.
