Amber Burg's Blog

At any moment during the day students enjoying the luscious campus green space, waiting in crowded lines in the cafeteria, or lingering in dorm hallways with friends. Even at night students pack into lounges or curled up in the Learning Center with a textbook in their lap and a highlighter in hand. Students linger everywhere on campus, except on weekends.

Colleges known to be low on student bodies during weekends are called suitcase campuses. Meaning students never really unpack their belongs because they will head home soon enough.

According to the New York Times, “52% of freshmen that attend a four-year public college live within 50 miles of home.”At Morningside, the case is no different. Most students live with a hour drive. (insert fact of how many students live in around here)))).

How deserted campus gets on weekends depends on the weekend. If few activities are going on, college resembles the emptiness of a desert as a tumbleweed blows across it. Morningside could be considered to be half of a suitcase campus because students do not go home every weekend but every two or three weeks campus goes dead quiet.

Saturday mornings on campus in the cafeteria are crowed with freshly woken-up college students standing, some half asleep and others wide-eyed and perky, in line for brunch. Labor Day Weekend was the exact opposite. The grey tables surrounded by maroon and yellow chairs can be found in their chaotic rows but empty. Lines that are usually ten to twenty students long are just one to two people long. Brunch lines are a breeze.

The room itself, quiet. Quiet enough that if a pen dropped it could be heard two tables down. Conversations can be picked up on across the length of the cafeteria.

Students call out to one another from the high tables colored with sunlight from the windows to the tables and booths that surround the flat-screened televisions.

The long halls of Dimmitt, usually bustling with young freshman excited about something, are empty and silent. No music blares. No doors slam shut or creak open. There are just rows of shut grey doors and recently un-walked grey carpet.

At night, RAs are found roaming the hallways on their rounds. It’s an easy night for them because no ones here so no one causes any problems.  The most students they have on their hall are three.

For the students that go home, their journey starts with Friday afternoon or in the evening for some. They take the walk to their vehicle, some struggling with overstuffed duffel bags around their shoulders, laundry baskets filled to the brim with dirty worn clothes, and a backpack stuffed with textbooks thrown on their back. They throw their swollen duffel bag in the backseat along with other various things and climb into the front seat to shove the key into the ignition. The car comes to life with the purr of the engine and thus begins their familiar drive back home.

Some students wonder why others go home? For some like Brittany Rupp, a junior, it’s to see their younger siblings at home. She has a 2-year-old blonde hair little sister who is just learning how to talk and still wobbles slightly when she walks. Along with her she has another sister who just hit Junior High and a brother who is high school. Being two hours away she misses the little things of their lives, her baby sister learning to talk or her brother’s band concert.

Brittany receives messages, pictures, and phone calls keeping her up-to-date on the family activities and developments but nothing beats the drive home down I-29 in her red pickup truck to a fluffy white Siberian Husky that greets her at the door along with a blonde haired toddler who still has a hard time saying her name.

Others go home because a big brown Lab with eyes the color of deep chocolate brown is waiting at the door with their tail wagging. If a person happened to walk into Jennifer Olinde’s dorm room at college they’d find pictures of her dog, that she’s had since he was a pup, plastered over the off-white colored walls near her bed.

Most colleges don’t like receiving the label of suitcase campus. It gives them a bad image. They want to be seen as a campus that has a wide variety of student population and activities at all times.  Organizations like MAC, plan events on weekends for students to get them to stay. They host midnight movies and have comedians and various entertainers come perform in hopes of getting students to stay.

The college wants to make the school feel like a home to students, not just a place away from home. For some, like Brittany and Jennifer it’s a second home, its just missing important people and animals.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/education/edlife/at-suitcase-schools-around-the-country-friday-means-its-time-to-leave.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Brittany Rupp  blr002@morningside.edu

Jennifer Olinde  jlo003@morningside.edu

This entry was posted on Friday, September 12th, 2014 at 9:19 am and is filed under Journalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.