JORDAN PATTERSON
News Editor
For the first time in Fredonia’s history, the University will be lowering the cost for on-campus living.
“Why not right now?” Vice President for Student Affairs Cedric Howard said when asked about the timing of the reduction.
The price for a double-standard bedroom is currently $7,600. SUNY compares schools on campus living costs by measuring their prices for double-standard rooms. Fredonia is on a list below Buffalo State and University of Buffalo.
Next year, the price will only go down $50. But the biggest decrease, and perhaps the biggest selling point, will be with the single bedrooms. The single rooms will be slimming down by $400 to $4,000 per semester.
“You can imagine with traditions and customs to even engaging in conversation of reducing a dollar was a significant discussion,” Howard said.
“As a public institution, we’re established to serve the good of the public,” Howard said. “ I think that it was very, very amenable to say, ‘How can we serve our students better?’.”
According to Residence Life Director Kathy Forster, students want to have their own room.
“What we’re finding is that an attraction for students to live on campus is to have their own room,” Forster said, “and being that we have the space because we’re managing enrollment to better serve our students … we have the space to offer the single and at a lower cost.”
According to her the biggest selling points to living off-campus is a private bedroom and a kitchen to cook their own food. This is why Fredonia has focused on lowering the single rooms and the kitchen suites.
“To make it convenient for student teachers and graduate students, we’ve significantly lowered the cost,” Forster said.
The prices for the more expensive townhouses will remain the same due to how new they are. According to Howard, reducing prices for the town houses would’ve made Fredonia fall beneath a “debt ratio” that comes with financing new dorm rooms.
The main reason they reduced the prices was to stay competitive. But Howard admitted that it was “the right thing to do.”
Apparently, Howard got the message from students that if they were going to live on campus, the school would have to to remain competitive.
In all of SUNY Fredonia’s 191 year history, this is the first time the administration will be reducing the price.
Although Fredonia couldn’t touch the cost of tuition, this is viewed by some as the next best thing.
Along with reducing the price for on-campus living, Howard mentioned that they would be reducing the student fee charge down by $9.
All of these reductions will take effect next fall and will remain in place for at least two whole years, according to Howard. At that point they will evaluate the price reduction to see what they will do in the future. Howard gave no guarantee that after the first initial two years that the lowered prices would stay.
“The administration … is very committed to building a culture of student success,” Howard said. “Part of building that culture is really having the students voice and input a part of the decisions that we’re making.”
Howard also admitted that this move was a symbolic move as much as it was a logistical move.
The full prices for each type of room can be found at http://students.fredonia.edu/reslife/.