This letter is in response to Jason Noble’s Sept. 15 column, “Young and old don’t always mix.” As a 25-year-old independent undergraduate who had lived in dorms for seven years before moving to University Village this year, I feel I am qualified to comment.

Mr. Noble, there is one simple reason that upperclassmen and non-traditional students are allowed to live in the dorms — if they weren’t, it would be discriminatory.

Iowa State is an equal-opportunity educational institution. There is no room here for ageist attitudes such as Mr. Noble’s, because they promote an atmosphere of intolerance that will hurt the university as a whole.

As for Mr. Noble’s complaints about older students being matched with freshmen as roommates, I would predict that someone new to the experience of college, with an open mind, could quickly come to appreciate the wide range of experiences that older people bring with them.

The difference in age and customs may be uncomfortable at first, but I can tell you from experience that many freshmen can be equally as difficult. I would be willing to guess most older students will not be up at 3 a.m. watching TV when you want to go to sleep or blasting their music at maximum volume so you have to go somewhere else to study.

Furthermore, I get the idea that Mr. Noble does not fully understand the reasons why upperclassmen and nontraditional students choose to live or remain living in the dorms.

Ironically, some of the very reasons Mr. Noble cites as for why the dorms are appealing to freshmen remain appealing to students as they age. Some, including myself, may even move off-campus and begin to find themselves missing the things that most freshmen take for granted. There is no real sense of community among most apartment complexes, like there is in the dorms, so it can be hard to make friends. For those of us who are relatively quiet, the constant exposure to a solid community can be a real social asset.

Secondly, you cannot understand how annoying it is to have to cook for yourself until you have done it for months at a time. To have to only walk five minutes to the nearest dining center, and spend ten minutes there getting food and eating, is a huge convenience. So is having a computer lab available right where you live.

Finally, Mr. Noble’s argument that living with non-traditional students could be “dangerous” is absolutely ludicrous. I have talked with enough non-traditionals to know they come to a university because they truly want to learn, either from feeling that there is some kind of hole in their lives, or they did not finish something they started long ago. They are not here to drink, or do other things that put their own safety or the safety of others at risk (not that freshmen are, but you cannot deny that it happens). Mr. Noble gives absolutely no evidence to the contrary for his remarkably offensive concluding statement.

I would urge all of you who read this to think about the value of having upperclassmen and non-traditional students within the dorm system. If you are open-minded, flexible and patient with these types of people, you may end up with a very valuable friend, different from any you ever expected to make during your college experience.

Dan Heck

Senior

Computer Science