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The Cost of
Campus Living
UO SAYS REQUIRING FRESHMEN TO LIVE IN DORMS
IMPROVES ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE, BUT SOME STUDENTS
SAY THE POLICY ISN’T WORTH THE HIGH COST
By Jade Yamazaki Stewart
L
ily Wheeler paid nearly $1,500 a month for
a spot in the University of Oregon’s Living
Learning Center dorm and a standard meal
plan freshman year. She lived in the roughly
200-square-foot space with a roommate
and had to share showers and bathrooms
with the rest of her floor. The dorm didn’t
have a kitchen.
Wheeler received the Pathway Oregon scholarship,
which covered tuition and fees. But she says she and her
mother were forced to take out loans to pay for the dorms
and the meal plan, which together cost $13,450 for the
school year minus winter break — around eight months.
Now a junior, Wheeler lives in a two-bedroom, one
bath apartment with a kitchen on Mill Street, a 10-minute
walk from campus. She says she now pays $450 in rent
and around $200 for food every month, less than half of
what she paid freshman year. She shares the apartment
with another person, but has her own room.
Wheeler is around $15,000 in debt. She says she worries
about her finances after graduation.
“I would have half the amount of debt, and my mom
wouldn’t be in debt at all, if I didn’t live in the dorms,”
she says.
UO started its first year live-in requirement in 2017,
citing enrollment reports that showed that students who
lived in the dorms their first year between 2006 and 2017
had higher graduation rates and GPAs. Wheeler says she
was forced to live in the dorms, even though she didn’t
want to. She and others say the dorms are too expensive.
Housing officials say living in dorms gives students a
social network and helps ease the transition into college.
The most affordable dorm options cost nearly $9,400
per school year for a triple room and a meal plan that
allows unlimited access to Carson Dining Hall, a large
cafeteria. The same room with a standard meal plan,
which offers other campus food options, costs nearly
$12,000. Singles or doubles with baths in some halls cost
more than $20,000.
“The live-in requirement was absolutely instituted
for the purposes of student success and of students
staying in school,” says Michael Griffel, the university’s
housing director.
He says many public universities across the country
have been implementing the policy for similar reasons in
the last 10 years. Griffel says students who live in dorms
join a diverse community and have access to academic
resources like resident professors.
He also says that students who don’t want to live on
campus can fill out exemption forms.
“It’s incredibly easy to have an exemption,” Griffel says.
But Wheeler says her exemption request was denied.
She says she filed an exemption to try to live with her
parents a few miles from campus in Springfield, but she
was refused.
The UO housing website says that “all incoming first
Not the End of the Line
THE EUGENE MISSION OFFERS STABILITY AND HOPE TO ITS GUESTS
By Dan Buckwalter
T
o get there you travel Blair Boulevard
and take a left at West First Avenue.
The road leads to Eugene Mission, a
nonprofit started in 1950 in downtown
Eugene and at its current 7.5-acre
location since 1967.
You pass the veterans’ area and the
Conestoga huts, work and storage areas, the Women’s
Center and a Family and Children’s Center. You see the
administrative offices, the Men’s Center and, finally, a
fenced off area beneath an overpass.
To the untrained eye it has the imposing feel of the
end of the road.
Don’t say that to Jessica or Sam, two residents of the
of the Women’s Center.
“I disagree with that,” Sam says. “I try really hard to
look at people with God’s eyes. [Eugene Mission] opened
E U G E N E W E E K LY . C O M
their doors to the homeless. They helped me feel loved.
They helped me be more stable.”
Sam and Jessica, both older women at the shelter,
asked that Eugene Weekly not use their full names to
protect their privacy as they rebuild their lives.
“I was so adamant about not coming to the Mission,”
Jessica recalls of a two-week hospital stay for anxiety
and other health-related issues. She walked through the
doors of the Mission almost two years ago. “I’m just so
appreciative the Mission is here.”
Tabitha Eck, director of Strategic Operations and
Resources at the shelter, works closely with the Women’s
Center. She calls the homeless women at the shelter the
“most fragile of our communities.”
Jessica and Sam are just two examples. Jessica and
her dog, Snoopy, escaped a physically and verbally abu-
sive housing situation with nowhere else to go. She had
year undergraduate students are required to live on
campus.” But the website includes a list of commonly
granted exemptions. Living with your parents nearby is on
the list, and Wheeler does not know why she was denied.
Sophomore and Eugene native Pilar Tosio also went
into debt to pay for the dorms. She says she enjoyed her
time living in Walton Hall but doesn’t think it was worth
taking out loans.
“I think it’s a stupid policy, because a lot of people
can’t afford to live in the dorms,” Tosio says. “They’re a
lot more expensive than comparable off-campus housing.”
She now pays around $600 a month in rent for a shared
flat at Skybox Apartment, located next to Matthew Knight
Arena.
Other students echo Griffel’s views on the social value
of living in residence halls freshman year.
Junior Molly Shwartz, who came to UO from Los
Angeles, says she made most of her best friends by living
in Hamilton Hall.
“It’s really hard to make friends in college, especially
at such a big school,” she says. “I don’t know how I would
have made friends any other way.”
Shwartz says she supports the live-on requirement
because she has friends who benefited from the experience.
She says her father struggled to pay for her to live in
the dorms, and he doesn’t struggle to pay her off-campus
rent now. But Shwartz says the money was worth it because
she made a smooth transition to Eugene and college.
Bernice Amaya, another junior from Southern California,
says she also made invaluable connections in her time in
Bean Hall. Bean Hall doubles are notoriously cramped.
“The room was so small that you can hold your room-
mate’s hand while you’re both lying in bed,” she says.
She says she didn’t mind the tight quarters because they
made it easy to make friends. Amaya says she and many of
her dormmates from Bean Hall still live in apartments and
houses together. Amaya says she and her “fellow Beans”
are planning to rent a cabin together for MLK weekend.
Although she liked the dorms, she doesn’t agree with
the live-on policy.
“Considering how expensive it is to live in, I don’t think
that anybody should be required to live in, regardless of
if the university says it promotes higher GPAs or a better
social life.” ■
drained her savings in an unsuccessful attempt to obtain
a restraining order, was on anti-depressants that were
only making her anxiety worse and was two months
behind on rent.
Sam has been in and out of sobriety, at one point
almost 10 years sober. She lost that and was arrested
earlier this year in the St. Helens area on an old warrant.
An attorney in St. Helens and a Columbia County
judge took mercy on her. Charges were dropped and Sam
returned to Eugene and for the second time to Eugene
Mission in August.
“I felt home,” she says.
The Eugene Mission was formerly known as a faith-
based emergency shelter. Men and women who stepped
through the doors were required to attend chapel services.
That has not been the case for years, though Sam, in
an effort to sustain her sobriety, has leaned hard on the
chapel and her faith in a higher power.
Instead, the shelter aims to welcome everyone as they
come, no matter how broken, and the volume of people
entering the Mission is increasing, says Shannon Smyth,
Supportive Services manager at the shelter.
The Women’s Center at Eugene Mission has a capac-
ity of 70 beds with an additional 30 emergency beds to
handle overflow from other agencies, Smyth says. The
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