First Year Housing
After you send in your deposit to Union, you will receive a 'First-Year Information' (FYI) booklet in your home mailbox. In it is a lot of information (and a lot of forms to fill out). Once you read through it thoroughly, have sent back all the completed forms, here's what is next:
As a first-year student, you'll be living in one of these places at Union:
First-year Buildings (all buildings are coed)
- Davidson Hall - about 280 residents, suite-style, some single-gender floors
- Richmond Hall - about 140 residents, doubles, single-gender floors
- Webster - about 50 residents, doubles and triples, 'Focus Study'
- West College - about 170 residents, coed floor (men on one side, women on the other)
For more information about residence halls visit here
*Please note: ALL of our first-year rooms are considered substance-free (no drinking, smoking, drugs, etc.). Students preferring a more-specific housing designation regarding these things would want to consider 'Focus-Study' housing.
Professional Staff
The professional staff are listed here
First-year Student Staff
- Webster - 1 RA
- Davidson Hall - 8 RAs and 1 Senior RA
- West College Hall - 5 RAs, 1 Head RA
- Richmond Hall - 4 RAs, 1 Head RA
How are roommates assigned?
Matching is done by hand based on the housing forms that you fill out from your FYI booklet. Students are housed based upon the date that all of the forms from the FYI booklet are received. Each first-year residence hall floor houses Minerva 'clusters', only 2-3 Minerva's are represented on each floor. Once the floor assignments are determined, we look at the lifestyle preferences that you indicated in order to match you up with someone who has similar preferences as you do (morning/night person, study in silence/with noise, neat/messy room). We take great care to make the roommate pairs as successful as possible, however you will soon find that the Union community extends far beyond your room and your roommate. The campus is small enough, it's easy to find your friends, even if they're down the hall, or in another building!
The Residential Life staff encourages all students to be active community members, building positive and safe living-and-learning atmospheres within the residence halls. So - what does that mean?
- It means you need to live with each other positively and unselfishly.
- It means you need to step out to interact with your roommate & neighbors.
- It means that sometimes you won't get everything you want - and that's OK
- It means that you need to be ready to learn and grow from each other - and be willing to let others learn and grow from YOU.
And sometimes you may goof up, and end up in violation of College policy. What do you do then? Take responsibility. You're an adult now, so if and when that happens, own up to it, and tell your RA or Campus Safety. The consequences are probably not as bad as you think.
Does it sound like we have high expectations of you?
Good - because we do! There's a lot more to share, but studies show that too much information all at once is worse than no information at all - so, more info will come with your room/roommate assignment in mid-August.