Students who want to move out of the dorms or on-campus housing now have to take a quiz this spring to move off campus.
The initiative is part of the Comprehensive Alcohol Action Plan, and it is meant to teach students about the responsibility of living on their own.
The quiz is based on a Powerpoint presentation students will have to view before taking it.
We think students should be informed about how to deal with neighbors and the fines and penalties for hosting parties, but a Powerpoint presentation and a 10-question quiz is not the way to go about teaching them.
It’s not the university’s responsibility to make sure students know how to live on their own. If students don’t know that they need to pay utilities or read a lease before signing it, they probably aren’t ready to live off campus.
And taking a 10-question quiz won’t help them, either. Especially since students can take the quiz as many times as they need to in order to pass.
The quiz seems pointless. Students can view the Powerpoint presentation and take the quiz from their own computers at home, and the presentation covers far from difficult material.
The quiz seems so easy it’s almost insulting. Based on the material in the Powerpoint, we can just imagine questions such as “How do you deal with a roommate conflict?” and “What should you consider before signing a lease?”
These things are common sense.
It seems the university feels as if it needs to do something to help students learn responsibility, but the effort isn’t there.
The Alcohol Plan is a serious initiative, and this quiz is everything but.
The quiz also involves questions about being good neighbors, and this does not surprise us.
There have been conflicts before between students and the neighborhood associations surrounding Bradley.
It seems as if the quiz would temporarily appease those neighbors who have been involved in problems with students before, but passing a quiz does not a good neighbor make.
Students who do not have the common courtesy to quiet down parties and clean up around the outside of their houses are not going to change their ways after taking the quiz.
The quiz also asks questions about the university’s alcohol policy. And just because students can answer questions about drinking tickets does not mean they will likely stop receiving them.
We are not saying the university needs to try harder in teaching students responsibility. We are saying we don’t need help.
If we needed help, we probably wouldn’t be able to live on our own for very long.
