Baker University Student Senate gathered student feedback through a survey regarding the topic of whether or not seniors should be allowed to live off campus.

Currently, students must request a residency requirement exemption to live off campus.

Student Senate President Katie Thurbon came up with the idea to do the survey and Paige Rockers, who is in charge of public relations, created the survey on the website Survey Monkey.

“Katie came up with the idea originally that some of our residence halls are not necessarily at full capacity and that maybe consolidating them and allowing seniors to live off campus would be more beneficial to the university and to students,” Rockers said.

Questions included the following:

• If you could live off campus as a senior, would you?
• If you did (or do) live off campus, would you still purchase a meal plan?
• Did the fact that Baker does not generally allow students to live off campus make a difference when choosing a college?

There were 41 respondents to the survey, which was available through Monday. Nineteen of the respondents were seniors, and 35 of the 41 said they would live off campus as a senior if they could.

Several comments from the survey acknowledged the fact that the inability to live off campus was not something they knew about right away when choosing Baker University.

Student senate hasn’t discussed this issue in a meeting yet, but plans to bring it up after gathering the opinions of students.

The student senate may then present the information to the “appropriate parties,” including Dean of Students Cassy Bailey.

“If there’s any possibility of making a change, we would go up from there,” Rockers said.