1 week Ago
It was with great concern that I read the article ” Record enrollment at UConn leaves hundreds stranded” in The Courant. And I was grateful to read of the updated situation in the article ” UConn can accommodate 40,000 students senate leaders say .” Yes, there are problems to solve here, but no one has died.
It is not so long ago that there were no in-person classes and no people living in residence halls. Has everyone forgotten those times? Have we learned anything from them? I do not understand why some students would so quickly accuse the university of trying to hurt them. It has always been difficult to precisely predict housing requirements for Storrs and there have been times in the past when nontraditional housing has been utilized.
The numbers this year may be bigger, but the concepts involved are the same. We should be happy that we have the luxury to deal with solving these problems instead of having all learning online. There is an underlying situation that feeds into the UConn housing situation and has done so for years, in fact for generations, and that is the relationship between the town of Mansfield and the students at the university.
Although the town is grateful to have the business of the students, it has been made clear multiple times that the town residents for the most part do not want to be living in proximity to students. Loud and often destructive behavior and parties are not and never have been welcome in Mansfield, whether they are celebratory of a university athletic event or part of spring weekend. The 1979 spring weekend at UConn was so bad that someone wrote an article to the New York Times Connecticut section condemning the very concept of residential colleges.
I responded to this by writing a piece that was published in the Times Connecticut section on July 12, 1979 titled, ”In defense of residential colleges.” So this has been an issue for a long time. The university has made considerable efforts to moderate student behavior but somehow it has never seemed to be enough.
Was it not for this longtime problem there would have been much more housing that had been developed in Mansfield that students could utilize, which would greatly mitigate any on-campus housing shortages that might occur and give the university more flexibility to face the future. I was fortunate enough to get housing off-campus at a very close complex known as Orchard Acres apartments, which was within walking distance to UConn and which was built by the now late Lester Foster, a local real estate developer and charitable donor to many causes, including UConn. If there was someone like Mr.
Foster around today, i believe that UConn could work with them and develop considerably more close local housing for students to help alleviate this perennial housing problem and support a larger student population well into the future. I strongly urge state senators, and anyone concerned, to join with UConn in efforts to improve the student housing situation in mansfield and help actualize the construction of close local housing that is acceptable to all. Lisa P.
Rimland lives in Glastonbury,.
