College Adults

Imagine that you are an 18 year-old person lying in your bed. Next to you is your significant other. The time is about 2 a.m. and there is a knock on the door. The person at the door pushes their way threw and proceeds to throw your significant other out and give you a slip telling you that you must report to a hearing for punishment. Does this sound slightly odd to you? It does to me, but unfortunately visitation hours, and many other restrictions, are placed on Piedmont College students living on campus.

Piedmont College requires that its students receiving major scholarships live on campus. It also requires that all athletes, those under 21 and not living in a surrounding county with parents or guardians, and certain others live on campus.

I know that Piedmont has concerns invested in its students; however I feel that if the college is going to require students to live here they should provide a situation where adults can act like adults. This, to me, means not having visitation hours, not requiring students to have a meal plan, allowing students the ability to cook in their rooms, and not making students subjects to random room searches.

The meal plan is the thing that really does not make sense to me. I believe students should be allowed to cook in their rooms and not have to have the meals plans. Now there is the side of the argument that this is a fire hazard and Piedmont needs to protect its buildings; however I feel that if they are going to require students to live on campus this is a trade-off they should be willing to make. I know many people, including myself, that would probably not eat in the cafeteria if they did not have to pay for anyways.

The argument has been made, as to the reasoning behind keeping students on campus, that a school as small as Piedmont needs to have its students on campus to create a “tight knit” environment. This “small town atmosphere” is claimed to be a necessity for such a small school. My argument to this is my experience with the Piedmont College Theatre department. Many of its students are commuting students, but you will be hard pressed to find a closer knitted group of students on campus.

One friend of mine that lived on campus at West Virginia University comes to mind as I think about this topic. As I discussed Piedmont’s dorm policies with him, he was shocked by how strict the rules and regulations were. And, in fact, when I went the WVU for a visit I was very impressed with the freedom allotted to their students.

Overall my opinion is that if a person is going to be required to live on campus, then that person, presumable being more then 18 years of age, should be allotted the rights and freedoms of any adult living on their own. I believe that if a person is responsible enough to leave home and start college, they should be responsible enough to be trusted with their own lives. One of the ideas behind a college education is to prepare a person for life outside an educational environment. How is a student supposed to learn to live in the real world, when their college regulates so much of their life? Piedmont College should not be baby-sitting and/or enforcing regulations on its students.