Saturday, February 09, 2008

University Boots Students From Dorms For Low Grades

Reasonable people can argue over whether or not this policy is a good idea, but I'm a firm believer that if you have a rule that you don't enforce you must either enforce it or get rid of it--having rules that are not enforced breeds contempt for all rules.

SUNY Old Westbury has removed 87 residential students from their dormitories for having grade point averages below 2.0, enforcing a policy that appears to be the only one of its kind on Long Island...


"Our goal is to have students with us who are serious about their studies," said Michael Kinane, assistant to the president...

The policy has been in effect since at least 1994, Kinane said, but had not previously been enforced. University president Calvin O. Butts III had sought to do so two years ago, Kinane said, but didn't feel the school had communicated it well enough to students.

As the fall semester began, students received letters and each dorm had a meeting about the policy, Kinane said.


I'll be interested to learn if this policy lasts.

3 comments:

Ellen K said...

I think I would put an opposite policy in effect. Most of the kids who get in trouble for underage drinking and various binging situations are living off campus or in fraternity or sorority houses. The partying in these situations is legendary. Instead of making them leave dorms, how about we institute a policy wherein students in danger of being put on academic probation are REQUIRED to live in a dorm and to attend DAILY STUDY SESSIONS, and adhere to-dare I say it- MANDATORY CURFEWS until their GPA reaches 2.6 or higher? Since some students are smart enough to get into college, but think it's a place to play, this would reinstill the work ethic to the students' effort because there would be no fun, fun, fun until they learned how to really go to college.

Darren said...

Where I went to college, we all lived in the dorms--uh, barracks.

Ellen K said...

The trend now if for parents to rent off campus apartments. It is a very strange set up, where each roomie pays about $800 per month for a room and the privelege of sharing a bathroom, living and kitchen areas with three other people. Since four people live in each apartment, that's $3200 per month. And the only reason parents do this is because they don't want their kids to have to share anything in a dorm situation. They have no idea how private apartments look the other way when major problems are ongoing. And for $3200 per month, you could buy and absolute palace in this particular town.