I am here at State pretty much because of scholarships. I’m from the New Orleans area, and I knew I wanted to go to a school far away enough not to be beckoned home but close enough to make a weekend trip home if needed.
I had many scholarship offers from many schools, but I liked State’s campus. And I also liked the nice housing options. The scholarship I accepted in 2009 included a housing scholarship, which I could use for on-campus housing. I didn’t think it would be a big deal to live on campus for four short years, especially since State had nice dorms and on-campus apartments I could utilize in my upperclassmen years.
However, as you may have heard, both Arbour Acres and Aiken Village are shutting down, leaving no on-campus apartment option for those of us who accepted a housing scholarship.
And, I hate to say this, but if I would have known that my on-campus housing options would be limited to dorms my final year here, I would have accepted a scholarship at another school that would allow me the liberty to live where I choose.
I understand both apartment complexes are old and beyond repair, but where does that leave those students who were depending on those facilities when they initially accepted a housing scholarship?
What if, when I accepted my scholarship, I was planning on marrying my high school sweetheart after my freshman year? What if we both had housing scholarships and were planning to live together in the on-campus student apartments after we wed?
The elimination of this housing is unfair. It’s suggesting that in order to cash in on your housing scholarship, you’re not allowed to be a married studnet and live with your spouse. Although I’m not planning on getting married anytime soon, it infuriates me to see the discrimination the change in housing inadvertently brings.
So what is my beef with this, then? Well, when I accepted my scholarship and chose to come to State, I took careful consideration of the housing options available at different schools. It seems unfair to me to take away an entire housing option.
I was indeed planning on living in the on-campus apartments next year, and I was enraged to discover that they are not only going to be torn down, but no alternative would be offered.
So many solutions could be established for this problem. This year’s freshmen, sophomores and juniors (since it won’t be an issue for seniors) with housing scholarships should have an option to convert their housing scholarships to regular scholarships, allowing students to use it for living off-campus.
If this isn’t a possibility, the students should be able to use the cash value of the scholarship (meaning the amount it actually costs the university to house a student) for off campus housing.
It’s inevitable that students will use this money for housing; they have to live someplace, after all.
Hopefully, State will soon release a proposed answer to this unexpected problem.
Wendy Morell is the opinion  editor of The Reflector.  She can be contacted at
[email protected].