The Psychological Effects of Dormitory Architecture and Layout on Residents
For many students, part of the experience of going to college is living in university housing. With so many young people living in such facilities, it is certainly worth investigating how they affect their denizens from a psychological perspective. It is established that one's environment is a major determinant in one's emotional and mental state. This paper will focus on architectural elements, such as floorspace, room layout, and occupancy levels of University residence halls, and how said design elements enhance or impede human interaction and individual moods. In addition to a general overview of the principles of environmental psychology and how they are routinely ignored by Florida State University in their dormitory architecture, several residence halls will be considered and detailed separately.
Of primary importance in dormitory design is the issue of privacy. In Designing Places for People, author C.M. Deasy states: Privacy is as important to dorm residents as it is to anyone else, but it is usually much harder to obtain. Dormitory or barracks living implies being surrounded by people. Being alone or sharing private time with someone else is normally not considered to be an option. If privacy is needed, it must be sought somewhere else. In this regard dormitories fail to provide for an important human need. (58)
Unfortunately, few steps are being taken to improve upon this. It often falls to individual residents to develop a system by which they can each receive the necessary privacy. Even with the creation by those living in a residence unit of a system by which each individual can achieve privacy, it is hardly assure...
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...it would not prevent all instances of incompatible room or suitemates, it would weed out obvious mismatches, and probably raise the overall satisfaction levels of residents considerably.
In the future, when constructing dorms, Florida State should most definitely use the suite configuration. It provides additional privacy in the form of semi-private bathrooms, and promotes socialization. As stated above, though, all residents of a suite must be able to tolerate one another, so careful screening in room assignment is critical. If any new dorms are constructed they should have at minimum 125 square feet. More, between 150 and 200 would be preferable.
All of the information in this paper is only useful so long as someone uses it. It is the sincere hope of the author that the research and conclusions be put to good use by students and faculty alike.
At St. Ambrose University, the housing is mainly two bedrooms sharing one bathroom, instead of a communal bathroom. Private universities are mainly about giving a safe and supportive community that each resident can feel comfortable enough in to thrive. On top of the great housing, there are resident hall activities like volunteering. There are also over fifty clubs and after class activities available at St. Ambrose. There are academic, cultural, recreational and even more types of clubs and class activities available. St. Ambrose does its best to provide a home, away from home.
Our literature review consisted of six scholarly articles that were studies done on students who were going into college. The first article that we found focused on how important communication is when it comes to making friends. McEwan & Guerrero (2010) talked about the benefits of communication before getting to know someone. We based our questions off of this article regarding communication in order to find out about roommate interactions.
The OU Sooner Housing Center (SHC) is comprised of three housing facilities (The Jefferson House, The Jones House, and the Bud Wilkinson House) and a dining hall (The Wagner Dining Hall) which creates a family-like environment solely for residents. The Jefferson House houses all female residents, while the Jones House and Bud Wilkinson (referred to as “the Bud”) houses all males. The Wagner dining hall provides meals services only for students, faculty, and staff living in the three Sooner Housing Center. The first floor of the Bud is the “community center” which provides computers, a television, sitting areas, Ping-Pong and pool tables, a laundry room, and a main office. In the past, the Bud served only as athletic housing, but by 1996, the houses were converted to shared housing for both athlete (49%) and non-athlete (51%) “The change from all athletic housing to shared on-campus housing was originally mandated by the NCAA rules. As a result, the OU Athletics Department decided to take a creative approach and provide quality housing for all students” (Sooner Sports NP).
...nk and feel. Members of the mob are made to feel that they own a part of the organization and that their extra effort directly translates to the success or failure of their business. Believing one has the ability to make an impact makes all the difference in employee engagement and job satisfaction. When compared to current corporate structures, people feel they are not being rewarded for good effort. Many people go to work and waste time but still get paid the same amount. They feel like they could get by with minimal effort or resort to absenteeism and the corporation would not feel the effect. They have no real connection or stake in the organization’s success. Over time, this mindset creates deadwood that needs to be removed. The mob sees people who are not useful as liabilities. Henry, Tommy, and Jimmy knew how to clear out deadwood. ~C.R.
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The word “privacy” did not grow up with us throughout history, as it was already a cultural concept by our founding fathers. This term was later solidified in the nineteenth century, when the term “privacy” became a legal lexicon as Louis Brandeis (1890), former Supreme Court justice, wrote in a law review article, that, “privacy was the right to be let alone.” As previously mentioned in the introduction, the Supreme Court is the final authority on all issues between Privacy and Security. We started with the concept of our fore fathers that privacy was an agreed upon concept that became written into our legal vernacular. It is being proven that government access to individual information can intimidate the privacy that is at the very center of the association between the government and the population. The moral in...
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