General Suburban Updates and Rumours

[danbrotherston]

There's also a new tower at UWP, and at least Grebel and St. Jerome's have had major expansions in the last few years.

I believe the only new tower at UWP is CMH. Have they built another newer tower?

I’m pretty confident Grebel has added less than 100 beds since 1993. St. Paul’s, Renison, and St. Jerome’s have all added some, but even so, it’s not proportional to the size of the institution. Overall, it’s a change in approach. In the 60s, it seems to have been assumed that a large fraction of students would live in residence; now, it is assumed that only a small minority will live in residence.

....

I'm not sure what the strategy was in the 1960s, but the strategy today, or at least as of a few years ago, was that everyone in first year would have the opportunity to live in residence, and most (who didn't live at home) would do so. After first year, it was expected students would move out of residence, they had only one small dedicated upper year residence (which is no longer generally available, it's some kind of business program) as well as the dons in the first year residences.

I know they struggled to make room, they converted REV to 3 student rooms (which wasn't very popular) and they rented space from a Laurier residence near Laurier (which was even less popular), so I'm not sure what their numbers are these days in terms of first years in residence, but I'd bet it's still a majority.