Opinionated Column: New Tiny Homes and Dining Hall at KWU by: Beau Grant

In 2023, Kansas Wesleyan University will be opening a new dining hall and building new tiny homes for students to live in. I feel that there are some pros and cons to each of these decisions. First the dining hall, if you ask me I think the dining expeirience here isn’t as bad as compared to some other small colleges, and I feel there are options for everybody and there is a wide variety of food available everyday. Sometimes the food isn’t the quality we would all expect but you can only ask for some much. KWU also provides other dining options like the Den, who serve some good quality and has a ton of options. I think this new dining hall needs to be excepted properly in order for it to be successful. I assume there will be more room, and just overall more polished. But the question is what about the food? Is it going to change? If the food isn’t going to change and the dining hall is just simply moving locations and adding more space that would make the move somewhat pointless to me. But if one the perks is having better revamped food, I think this change will draw more attention to KWU and get more people to come here. 

Next is the tiny houses, this is a fun concept but I can see there being some flaws. First would be the order of which the homes are given out, I assume it would go upperclassmen to freshman but what if that’s not the case? I would be pretty upset as a senior if I had to live in the dorms while a freshman gets to live in a house. Another problem I see is people picking there roommates, assuming you don’t know if you’re going to be in a house when filling out a fall residence application, do you get to pick your roommates or are they randomly assigned? In the dorms you can prefer people to be your roommate but I don’t know if it will be the same in the houses. One more is in the dorms there are RA’s and RD’s in each floor/hall that enforce campus rules, and the question is how will they be enforced at the houses? There are however some pros of this operation. Tiny houses provide students haven’t gotten to live in a house an opportunity to do that and provides students opportunities to have their own rooms. Overall, on the outside the houses seem like they will provide a better living experience than the dorms, and I assume there will be a slew of students trying to get in them. 

Overall, I believe these changes to be beneficial to KWU if they are executed properly. They will get the university more traction on other schools and will most likely be a selling point to get new students to come to KWU.