By Elianna Novitch
First generation students don’t populate the First Generation Living Learning Community —but for the few that do, the situation seems to be working.
The community is meant to offer a support system for first-generation students as they transition to the University of Iowa with minimal guidance.
“If it really benefits [non-first-generation students] to be in that hall and helps them with their academics, then it’s fine with me,” said UI freshman and first-generation student Orlando Hammond, who lives in the first-generation community at Burge. “But if there are other people that are first generation and need that kind of support who aren’t getting it, then I think it is an issue.”
The community is a mix of first-generation and non-first-generation students on the floor, UI Residence Life Manager Amy Baumgartner wrote in an email to The Daily Iowan. Though UI Housing tries to keep the floor full of first-generation students only, the issue of extended housing and overflow limits that ability.
“Ideally, our goal would be for all students on the floor to be ‘first-gen,’ but with our housing currently as tight as it is, we need to have students filling our spaces,” Baumgartner wrote in the email. “At the end of the day, we need our students to have beds, so we wouldn’t leave spaces on the floor empty. This also is not a challenge exclusively with this particular community.
“There may be students living in Bizhawks who are not business majors and students living in Living Literature who are not English majors.”
For UI freshman John Suchy, a non-first-generation student, living in the first-generation community was about making friends and easing the transition from high school to college.
“The floor that I wanted to be on filled up really fast because there was limited space, so I read through the other descriptions of floors and the First Generation floor sounded interesting,” he said. “At that time when I was making the decision, I was really struggling with what route I wanted to take for college, and the [community] just really sounded like it could help.”
According to the UI Dining Housing website, the Living Learning Communities were created to provide students living in the residence halls with a group that offers them support and opportunity.
“There are many reasons why we have [communities] in our residence halls,” Baumgartner said. “Research shows that students who live in an [community] have a stronger connection to the institution, are more satisfied with their residence-hall experience, and are more engaged with their college experience.”
A variety of support is offered to students who live in the First Generation community in Burge, according to the UI’s Housing and Dining website. Some of this support includes the resident assistant on the floor, who is typically a first generation student themselves, along with other offices and resources on campus such as financial aid, Academic Support and Retention, Trio Student Support Services, and First Generation Iowa [a student organization for first-generation students].
“I am kind of setting the tone for my family and am making sure that I finish college,” Hammond said. “Being a first-generation student has made me want to do better than other people because I don’t really have an advantage. That title just makes me want to be better.”
The students who live in the First Generation group believe that there are no real issues regarding the mix of first-generation and non-first-generation students on the floor.
“Everyone is really cool, whether they are first-generation or not. I love my floor,” Hammond said.