Since the Board of Regents approved a proposal by Iowa State’s Department of Residence to lease off-campus housing for about 500 students last week, it is pretty clear that we can expect to see a record number of students at Iowa State in August.  Further, since Iowa State has enrolled many more new students this year (by March 1, more than 5,200 new students for fall 2013) than last year (March 1, 2012, more than 4,400 for fall 2012), it is clear that campus will be laboring under the footfalls of many people during the annual freshman orientation.  

Like other students who will be on campus for conferences and classes during the summer, those students have to live somewhere.  Currently, Maple, Willow and Larch Halls are slated to serve as the temporary addresses of orientees and their families.  Those buildings, which together can accommodate 1,584 students, nonetheless highlight an important part of college life that increasing enrollment directly implicates.  

Older students might remember that Eaton and Martin Halls, the comparatively posh, suite-style residence halls on the west end of campus, used to host prospective students and their families during orientation.  In brief, Eaton and Martin seemed to represent a general trend among colleges and universities to provide increasingly upscale residence and dining services as they competed with one another as never before and attempted to induce prospective students to buy their product — an “education” — at a high price for a number of years.  

As Iowa State has looked to building new apartments at Fredericksen Court and leasing other ones from landlords around Ames, it seems like that mode of thinking is still dominant over a preference for basic dormitories akin to Friley Hall or the commonly maligned Helser Hall.  (In all honesty, Helser wouldn’t be so bad if it had air conditioning.)  

A dorm room really shouldn’t be that important for a college student, however.  In addition to learning life skills that will allow us to obtain reasonably profitable jobs or careers, spending four (or, let’s face it, five or six) years at a college or university is supposed to be a time of constant self-discovery through trying new things.  Participating in unheard-of clubs, going to classes that teach unencountered perspectives, trying to resolve previously uncontemplated academic problems — all these core components of college life require spending time away from one’s bedroom.  

Indeed, there is something to be said for going to college far away from home and being unable to take one’s laundry back to Mom and one’s car back to Dad.  Necessity is the mother of invention, it is said, and being thrust out of the proverbial nest into a new, diverse environment requires us to branch out and put down our own roots.  

The benefit of having a place of residence that’s hardly bigger than a closet is, first, in its proximity to that new environment and, second, in the necessity that it engenders of becoming something of a minimalist.  In distilling our lives down to the bare necessities, we can more easily find out who we are.  

In the end, dorms don’t need to be luxuriant.  As many of us probably will discover this week as we study and cram for finals, if the university is open at night (like the library is until 2 a.m.), we’ll go there instead of remain at “home.”