Miles Beattie, a spring admit business administration major, found himself in sophomore housing due to lack of space in first-year dorms.
Surrounded by sophomores instead of fellow first-years, Beattie said living in Towers has made adjusting to Pepperdine feel overwhelming and isolating. Beattie said first-year dorms provide a sense of community that sophomore housing does not have.
“It would have been a lot easier if I had been with other freshmen,” Beattie said.
Beattie is not alone. Over enrollment and construction caused a housing shortage this year that forced several new students to be housed with upperclassmen, leading to potential negative academic and psychological repercussions on the student body. However, Pepperdine Housing and Residence Life professionals are actively working to prevent future issues from occurring and to improve housing for future students.
Why is there a lack of housing this year?
The 2017 class of first-year students was record breaking, said Robin Gore, Pepperdine director of Housing Operations.
There were 86 more students than last year and about 100 less beds than usual due to on-campus construction, Kristin Paredes Collins, dean of Enrollment Management at Seaver College, wrote in an email. This posed a major inconvenience for housing and incoming Pepperdine students.
Data courtesy Pepperdine Office of Institutional Effectiveness
Housing filled up all three-person rooms in first-year dorms and had much less flexibility with roommate switches this year, Gore said. The housing cram continued in January 2018, when 110 additional transfer and first-year students came to campus.
Housing officials offered sophomore students compensation for living in housing farther from main campus, like Drescher and George Paige, Gore said. This opened up room in Rockwell Towers for first-year students to live, which housing determined was a worthy alternative to first-year dorms.
“Our sophomores are probably more equipped to acclimate back to campus than a first-year student,” Gore said.
Pepperdine authorities agreed that first-year housing is most ideal for new students to acclimate to university culture.
The vast majority of new students are currently living in standard precinct housing, or first-year dorms, Gore said.
It is not ideal to have first-year and transfer students live in alternate housing, Connie Horton, vice president for Student Affairs, said. However, administrators reasoned that living on campus anywhere was better than living off campus in terms of acclimating to college.
“We worked hard to be be intentional with what spaces we could,” Gore said.
Gore sent an email to all first-year students that offered them a $1,000 scholarship from Seaver College as a concession for opting-in to a triple. This use of space allowed Housing and Residence Life to place more students in first-year dorms.
Housing and Residence Life also offered graduate students releases from housing contracts to allow for more available housing, Gore said. This is unheard of for Pepperdine.
What are the psychological effects of housing?
A Pepp Post poll of 52 students found that 90 percent believed living with students of the same age and stage of university life was beneficial because it allows students in similar life stages to grow alongside one another.
College housing can provide a positive support system and environment that allows a student to thrive, said Sarah Ballard, a professor of practice for Communication specializing in interpersonal communication.
“Personally, I met most of my close friends in freshman housing,” Keith McGuire, a sophomore sociology major said. “We lived in suites next to each other and met in the lobby every day.”
McGuire said his first-year living environment fostered more community than his sophomore-year housing did.
“There is a lot less mingling between rooms, suites and floors in Towers,” McGuire said. “You stick with people you know and rarely go out of your way to meet others.”
According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, housing supplies a human’s basic needs, Gore said. Housing enables students to reach higher levels of achievement in their college careers.
“We know that where you live and how well you live has a direct correlation with how students do in their academics,” Gore said.
Ballard said students who live on campus with fellow peers gain valuable life skills in communication and conflict-resolution.
Roommates and suitemates have the potential to be a wonderful support system, or a reason for students to drop out of college altogether, Ballard said.
“I would say that it has been really good to live with students of the same age as me,” Taylor McSpadden, a first-year psychology major, said. “I’ve met one of my best friends in this house.”
Student’s home lives influence university retention rates and student’s academic performance, Horton said.
“The studies are pretty clear that when you live on campus, you are more engaged in community and your GPA goes up,” Horton said.
How does Pepperdine help first-year and transfer students acclimate to the campus?
New Student Orientation equips new students with Pepperdine policies, registration, resources and community engagement, Horton said.
Programming within the house, in the Chaplains Office, and in the Counseling Center provides first-year students with multiple opportunities to connect with people, Horton said.
Beattie said he had a difficult time connecting with his fellow peers his first week at Pepperdine.
Beattie said his roommate in Towers, a sophomore, did not help him acclimate like a first-year student would. He thinks it would be beneficial to be grouped with students of the same age and stage of university life.
“Ideally, my roommate would be someone that I’d hang out with a little bit more,” Beattie said. “Someone to go get dinner with.”
Pepperdine can improve upon communication across grade-levels, Ballard said. If younger students have older classmates to look up to, they will acclimate better.
“For freshman, living with other students can build comradery, cohesiveness and connection,” Ballard said.
Maxwell Rickard, sophomore Hispanic studies major on a pre-veterinary medicine track, emphasized the environment of comradery that was created in his first-year dorm, Peppers Hall.
“When I was in Peppers, every time you walk out of your room you would see another guy. Whereas in Towers, when I walk out of my room, I’m just going to campus to meet someone, I won’t run into anyone.”
Stacy Rothberg, associate dean of students at Pepperdine, provides transfer and commuter students with additional resources to assist with community acclimation, Horton said. Rothberg specifies in mentoring, hosting events and checking in on transfer students specifically.
Even with these events, it is difficult for transfer students to integrate with their peers, Emily Lymberopoulos, a senior business administration major, said.
“Transfers assimilate to Pepperdine culture, but it is also very segregated because of transfer housing,” Lymberopoulos said. “We don’t really get to meet people who have been here since freshman year.”
Christine McKee, a senior sports administration major, requested first-year housing because she felt it would provide more opportunity to make friends than transfer housing would.Regardless, McKee said she still had to put herself out of her comfort zone to make friends on-campus.
“If you are less outgoing, it is really really hard, because sometimes you are in situations where you have to be,” McKee said.
How will housing impact the future of Pepperdine?
Housing continually plays a key role in the university’s retention rate, Gore said. First-year housing is most critical, as first-year students are the most at risk to drop out.
“Pepperdine has a very high retention rate compared to the national average,” Gore said.
According to Pepperdine University’s website, the four-year graduation rate is 79 percent compared to the 55 percent national average for private universities. Generally, the one-year retention rate for Pepperdine is 90 percent and the national average is about 70 percent.
Though Pepperdine is not planning on having a class as large as this year in the years to come, the university is taking measures to ensure the most ideal housing experience for students in the future, Horton said.
The opening of a new on-campus housing structure is one of the solutions to avoid this year’s housing crunch and address future concerns about space, Horton said.
“It is ideal if we can put people where we want to put people,” Horton said. “That is part of why we are so excited about Seaside.”
In two years, housing will be able to designate a suite in Seaside for first-year students that would feel similar to a first-year dorm, Horton said. It has the same layout and RA and SLA ratio to promote an active community among the students.
Additional efforts include leaving a suite empty in each first-year dorm, Gore said. When incoming students come in January, housing will have a space for them that will allow them to integrate better than they would in Rockwell Towers or Lovernich.
Aubrey Stanchak completed the reporting for this story under the supervision of Dr. Christina Littlefield and Dr. Theresa de los Santos in Jour 241 in spring 2018. Dr. Littlefield supervised the web story.
