With every first-year student required to live on campus, excluding those in Granville Towers, the on-campus experience is a rite of passage into UNC student life. However, as the years go by, they eventually face a daunting decision: whether or not to stay on campus.
With classic residence hall experiences like sharing small rooms, broken laundry machines, dealing with noisy roommates and watching your snacks mysteriously disappear, on-campus living is, for most students, a temporary and fleeting chapter in their college years.
So, you finally leave. You pack up your bags filled with your remaining dignity, Target decorations, free merchandise and leftover memories from the years, and you head to some questionable but affordable off-campus option. Or, in many cases, a pricey option that you try to justify.
Great, so you’re finally off campus in your own home without (too many) cockroaches or fire alarm drills at 2 a.m. You bask in the glory of off-campus life, enjoying somewhat delicious home-cooked meals, newfound independence and, most importantly, your own room.
But the honeymoon phase of off-campus living only lasts a little longer than the average college relationship — inevitably, it fades. You realize the only people you see are your roommates, your neighbors and the three peers you never stick around long enough to talk to outside of class.
You notice that you never remain on campus anymore, disappearing the second your daily obligations end. Your world starts closing in as you realize your old friends have drifted away, you keep missing out on the on-campus shenanigans and meeting new people feels like a distant memory.
I don’t have a PhD, but I coin this common college phenomenon the “off-campus effect.” This effect occurs when students leave the confines of Carolina Housing to explore off-campus apartment and house life, only to find themselves growing apart from the University and campus community as a whole.
I’ve seen this effect play out too many times with my friends and peers. They move off campus and then completely disappear off the face of the Earth. I never see them in the dining halls, the library, on the way to class — nowhere, really. Honestly, I don’t see them again unless I’m the one pressing them to grab lunch.
On top of that, they complain about seeing their friends less, falling out of touch, always playing catch-up on campus happenings and feeling disconnected from their UNC roots. I wonder why?
