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the on-campus living experience for OU |
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It is no coincidence that those universities historically recognized as
among the greatest in the United States and Great Britain — Yale,
Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Virginia, North Carolina, Cambridge and
Oxford — require freshmen to live on campus and strongly encourage
upperclassmen to live on or close to the campus.
It is also not a coincidence that the recent statewide commission on
the future of the University of Texas found that one of the greatest
deficiencies of that university is its failure to provide enough
housing to allow freshmen to live on campus.
It’s also not surprising that students who live on campus their
freshman year have substantially higher grade point averages and a 15
percent higher graduation rate than those who do not.
Of course, there should always be exceptions for health and financial
reasons which allow freshmen to live at home with parents who live
nearby.
If our goal, however, is to build a truly great university, having as
many freshmen as possible living on campus is critically important.
A great university is a true community where people of many different
backgrounds and academic interests get to know each other and form
bonds of friendship and mutual respect.
We do not grow personally and intellectually if we only live together
with people we already know who come from the same cultural background
and geographic area as ourselves.
Learning is not confined to the classroom or laboratory. We also learn
from our peers. One of OU’s greatest assets is the number of
outstanding students from across the United States and from around the
world who are enrolled here. Living together in close proximity during
the freshman year helps form important and lasting bonds.
In addition, as one of the few public universities in the nation with
faculty families living in residence halls, OU helps promote lasting
intergenerational friendships. Faculty-in-Residence professors often
invite colleagues into our residence halls to extend intellectual
stimulation through informal “bull sessions.”
— David L. Boren, President of University of Oklahoma
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