While students at Waynesburg University aren’t required to live in a traditional campus dormitory, it’s against school policy for them to rent an apartment or house, outside of campus, even if it is nearby. 

If a student is renting a nearby apartment or house, however, then that qualifies as an off-campus living situation.  

Students who violate the policy will be charged a semester’s worth of housing costs, as well as a 19-meal plan, according to housing.  

According to director of Housing Matt Pioch, the university is aware of students who are living off-campus dishonestly. 

“We have RAs that go on duty every night, and a lot of times they’re circulating in the residence halls,” Pioch said. “So usually we know if residents are living at the address they say they are. Other times, we just hear things. We live in the media age, so things travel very fast through Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram.” 

For Pioch, the school’s off-campus living policy is in place to keep its students in a safer
environment.  

“A lot of students talk about [the policy] as though it’s just us trying to get more money out of students,” Pioch said. “But really that’s not where it stems from. In a lot of different academic studies, it’s been proven that students that live on-campus and in an on-campus environment tend to perform better in the classroom, have better mental health, and have an overall feeling of connectedness, more so than when they live off-campus.” 

Some students have decided to rent a living space within town and tell housing they are commuting from home.  

According to Pioch, there are specific exceptions to the policy. Students who are 27 years or older are allowed to live off-campus due to “differences in life.”  

If the student is a guardian of a brother, sister or child, they are allowed to live in an off-campus house. 

The policy also doesn’t apply to commuters. Students are allowed to live within 60 miles of the university and commute from their parents’ address.  

The off-campus housing policy regulations were put into place for any student in the 2018 graduating class or later.  

In previous stories by The Yellow Jacket, freshmen were surveyed of their knowledge of the policy. In 2015, two-thirds of freshmen survey were unaware of the policy prior to attending Waynesburg, with just less than half being unaware in the same survey a year later. 

As a whole, Waynesburg also looks at the policies of similar universities to decide what its off-campus living policy should be.  

“Generally, our scope is institutions that are in a similar situation to us,” Pioch said. “We have a student body of around 1,100 students, and little over 1,000 reside on campus. We want to look at other Christian universities that are private, that are around our size and see what their policies are. For the most part, at least in this region, it’s not uncommon to have an undergraduate non-campus living policy.”