Move-In Day At New Student Housing Complex Will Show Emerging Trends In How College Students Live

Sonoma State University's newest student residence hall complex, Beaujolais Village, opens Saturday to 655 students with suites of four single bedrooms, each with its own bath.

Like colleges and universities across the nation that are building new residential facilities, SSU is finding it pays to stay competitive by attracting and retaining students with amenities in their living spaces that they would normally find at home -- and that means more privacy.

Recent trends show 84% of students coming into colleges had their own bedrooms at home and 40% had their own bathrooms, says Dan Howard, managing director at Fisher Friedman Associates, the architects for the fifth student housing complex on campus. "This is a far cry from the way people used to live in residence halls," he says.

Students begin moving into all of the residential areas on campus beginning at 10 a.m. The grounds will be busy with moving vans, trucks, shopping carts, dollies and boxes of personal possessions making their way into the suites and apartments. Some 1,100 Freshmen will have the help of teary-eyed parents as they move into Cabernet, Zinfandel, Verdot and part of Sauvignon Village.

Beaujolais Village will house transfer students and returning residents in the 1,150 sq. ft. apartments. Besides the four single bedrooms and baths, the units include a garbage disposal, microwave/convention oven, electric cook top, Corian countertops, dishwasher and laminated wood flooring in the kitchen and dining room.

There is carpeting throughout the living and bedrooms; radiant floor heating, Internet and telephone jacks in each bedroom, cable television connections in each bedroom and living room. They are fully furnished
including window coverings. Cost for the academic year is $7,350.

Times have changed and so have parents expectations, says Howard, who notes it is the parents who are driving the design for privacy. "Parents don't want anything to get in the way of their child's education," he says.

The $28 million complex was also built to help alleviate the need for housing for students in Sonoma County, and particularly in Rohnert Park. The complex is located on the southeast side of campus near E. Cotati Avenue. Construction of a second student residential complex for another 650 students will begin next spring. SSU currently houses 2,461 students and 85% of them are freshmen.

Media representatives are welcome to attend Move-In Day on Saturday, or arrange a private tour earlier in the week.

For further information, contact Jean Wasp, Media Relations, (707) 664-2057.

More information on SSU's on-campus residential program can be found at www.sonoma.edu/housing/