News

UCD to require on-campus living

Freshmen living outside 50-mile radius affected

By Boyd Fletcher
fletchar@mscd.edu

Starting next fall, UCD will be the first school on the Auraria Campus to require incoming freshman to live on campus.

The requirement will coincide with the completion of the Campus Village at Auraria apartments, located just west of campus on the former site of Atlas Metals, which is a project of the University of Colorado Real Estate Foundation.

"At this point, we are requiring all first-year students who reside farther than 50 miles from campus to live in student housing," said Danielle Zieg, UCD director of media relations.

The university can waive the requirement on a circumstantial basis.

"We aren't going to require a 50-year-old with grandchildren to be living there or anything like that," Zieg said.

Campus Village at Auraria, while owned by CUREF, is open to students at all three schools on the campus.

Metro spokeswoman Cathy Lucas said the college has no plans to follow UCD's lead with the residency requirement.

"At this point, requiring students to live in housing is not something the college is looking into," Lucas said.

According to the project description, UCDHSC signed a letter of agreement with CUREF agreeing to enact the residency requirement, market the project to incoming students and to refer students to the project exclusively until it reaches capacity.

However, according to Zieg, the school is not referring students anywhere specific, and they are pooling together information on all of the student housing projects to give students more choices when selecting where they want to live.

The Auraria Campus, whose charter was created by legislation in 1969, says that the campus would be non-residential. Since the Campus Village is not actually connected to the campus, and is privately owned and run, it does not violate the charter, Zieg said.

The opening of the Campus Village Apartments will create room for 685 students to live in their choice of a studio, one-bedroom or shared two-bedroom units ranging from $670 to $865 a month. The apartments are being constructed by Allen & O'Hara Education Services, which builds and operates campus housing projects nationwide.

Twelve applications have been filed since Oct. 5, the first day the Campus Village started accepting them, according to Dan Hawley, assistant manager at Allen & O'Hara. Applications for housing are available online, along with applications for Community Assistants, at www.myownapartment.com.

Hawley said they would begin processing the CA applications by next month and will be hiring the staff early next spring.

"Studies in recent years have shown there is a need for housing on this campus," said Obe Hankins with the UCD Office of Student Life.

Hankins said the school has made the new project known to students at college fairs in high schools around the state, as well as here on campus during Fall Fest.

"I think it is going to go ahead and change a lot of campus dynamics, you'll have people living and possibly working on campus," said Jason Thatcher, a UCD Student Government senator.

Thatcher is looking forward to more involvement and interaction of students on campus, and feels that the pricing for the housing options now available is ideal for a student looking to live in the downtown area.

Hopefully, he said, this will lead to more on-campus events and activities that are seen at more traditional universities.

"I don't see any major problems with the requirement. I'm sure they will handle things that come up on a case-by-case basis," Thatcher said.

"I heard a lot during orientation, 'where can we live?' and 'where can we hang out?' And this is going to answer that piece of the puzzle here."