Students who choose to remain in Rochester to enjoy the more relaxed pace of campus and take advantage of the recreational and job opportunities across the city have traditionally had three options for living situations.
The first is for students to live off campus; however, this can be quite a challenge and bear a hefty expense. The most common option is living in Residential Life housing, which is extremely costly. The third option available to all students, both Greek and non-Greek, was for students to live in the fraternity houses that open up for summer housing. This option provided an on-campus communal living experience at an extremely inexpensive rate.
However, from now on fraternity houses will be closed to any residents during the summers. According to the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs, summer housing on the fraternity quad was eliminated primarily due to health and sanitation concerns in the kitchens and common areas. Residents, expected to clean up after themselves, failed to do so – people seem to naturally wait for someone else to take care of problems in common areas rather than take the initiative to clean themselves.
While serious problems did exist last summer, and it is certainly clear that summer residents of fraternity houses are not going to maintain the buildings themselves, the OFSA should instead mandate that fraternities that wish to host summer residents agree to hire a routine cleaning service to make sure common areas are livable and lock the kitchens to eliminate food safety concerns. While this will increase the cost of rent, it will still be much more affordable than living in dorms. Eliminating summer housing in fraternity houses eliminates an extremely affordable housing option that many students, both Greek and non-Greek, rely upon and discourages students from enjoying the best months that Rochester has to offer.
