Papers > English > Oh Find Me a Home Where the Longhorns Roam
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Oh Find Me a Home Where the Longhorns Roam
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The story begins with a good little girl named, Leilani, who turns in her housing application right on time. She acts quickly during her senior year in high school in hopes of obtaining residency in that wonderful place called San Jacinto Dormitory. Wielding her sturdy pen in one hand, she skims across the application with ease and finishes in no time at all. She only takes a moment to check that it is completed in its entirety before sliding it into a pre-addressed and stamped envelope. And as she places it into her mailbox with care, a sigh of relief escapes her chest along with the doubts of ever getting a nice dorm. However, another little girl who lives a bit further down the road will unknowingly keep this from happening. Charity is a member of the Junior National Soccer Team, as well as an unbeatable soccer club. Since her freshman year of high school, coaches from all over the United States have watched her blossom as an athlete. And they continued to come on strong until one day, near the conclusion of her junior year, she signed a contract to play for the University of Texas at Austin. In retrospect, while others like Leilani prepared to receive their applications from universities, Charity already knew exactly where she was going. A few months later as they excitedly put down their number one choice for on campus living at UT, the thought of where to live never crossed Charity’s mind. Little did they all know, female athletes are given priority over rooms in San Jacinto. Nervous non-athletes fidget as the mail arrives, wondering if their room assignments are of what they hoped. Alas, many faces drop as they read dormitories like Jester and Kinsolving in place of San Jacinto. Athletes like Charity open their envelopes, see San Jacinto, and either feel pleased or just shrug it off. I propose that athletes be given a certain number of floors or rooms in each dormitory, rather than automatically receiving the nicer dorms. Naturally, they should be given a reasonable number to accommodate all of the underclassmen athletes who are required to live on campus and the handful of upperclassmen who may choose to remain. But I stress that room assignments should still follow their “first come first serve” policy in order to keep things fair. Similar to the arrangement for Honors dormitories, athletes should have their own lottery, separate from the rest of the students. That way, those who actually show more interest in a certain dorm will most likely get it. While many may feel that my proposal is ridiculous, I urge that they look at a few statistics. At our University, on campus housing offers 6,556 beds and promises 70% of them for the freshmen. They urge freshmen to live on campus due to the fact that students who have lived in the halls “are more likely to graduate in four years, achieve a higher GPA in undergraduate and graduate school, develop interpersonal contacts with faculty and other students, develop improved self-confidence and ability to speak in public, [and] finish college than those who never live on campus” (Division of Housing and Food). However, the freshman class grows steadily as the years progress, with my own in this 2002-2003 school year numbering about 7,000. So 4,900 of us got housing and the remaining 2,100 were left to fend for themselves. Perhaps a few never wanted to go near residence halls to begin with, but there were others that did and would have gladly taken Jester any day. If athletes had their own lottery, those senior football players on first floor Jester East (who never went through the Housing reapplication process) wouldn’t have kept the freshman players from the rooms they were suppose to occupy, thus not causing a domino effect of athletic dominance on other floors. The opposition may reason that since athletes bring in large amounts of revenue to the University, they should be given pretty much their hearts‘ desires.
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Paper Information
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Title: Oh Find Me a Home Where the Longhorns Roam
Words: 3261
Rating: None
Pages: 13
submitted by: Lorilei
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