Transferring to Georgetown can be downright disillusioning. Students who were unhappy at their former schools and actually did something about it come to Georgetown faced with the same hurdles – orientation and making friends with strangers, for example – they jumped the year before.
Unlike freshmen, however, transfer students face the added challenge of assimilating into a class of peers who have already made friends, gotten involved in activities on campus and became familiar with campus life. Georgetown should help make the transfer transition easier, specifically by modifying its approach to transfer housing.
Transfer students are currently housed in any available rooms on campus; often, the most unappealing housing options, like Village C East and LXR Hall, end up being a vacuum for transfers. These students often end up living in large blocks with other transfers, set apart from their peers.
Opportunities for transfer students to meet their non-transfer peers are limited. Freshmen meet many of their friends, the ones they will keep throughout college, in their living environments; because transfers are not often housed with non-transfers, opportunities to meet and bond with students besides other transfers are insufficient.
In a way, it makes sense for transfer students to live together. They have the common experience of leaving their former schools and are all equally new to Georgetown’s campus and way of life. Living together can be a chance for transfers to get to know one another and help each other out through a difficult transition.
But this housing arrangement can add to the sense of distance and isolation that transfer students feel upon coming to the Hilltop. Transfers should have the option of having transfer roommates who understand the process of adapting to their first semester on the Hilltop, but should not be forced to live in transfer blocks located in campus’s worst residence halls.
Rather than assign transfer students to any available rooms, the Office of Student Housing should instead reserve rooms for transfer students and their roommates, dispersing the rooms more equally throughout upperclassman residence halls (such as the Southwest Quad and Copley Hall, in addition to Village C East and LXR).
The logistical problems of such a policy – due to the delayed transfer application process, for example – should not be underestimated, but Georgetown should be able to reserve rooms based on their own estimations of how many transfers they will admit. If this policy were enacted, transfer students would be placed on floors with both transfer and non-transfer students, helping to forge those friendships that make the Hilltop home.
Some would argue that returning Georgetown students should have the first pick of residence hall options, especially since housing decisions are made in the early fall and transfer student applications are not due until March. If Georgetown is to make a concerted effort to welcome and incorporate its large transfer student population, however, it should reserve rooms in all areas of campus to better integrate these new students. If transfer students are more equally distributed throughout campus, the number of coveted housing options blocked off for transfers would be small. By doing this, Georgetown would both better incorporate transfer students into the general population and keep them from feeling like second-class upperclassmen who are fed returning students’ leftovers.
The university already does a good job of welcoming transfer students through a comprehensive New Student Orientation program. An adjusted approach to their living environment, one of the most essential components of the Georgetown experience, should be the next step.
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