By Sean Coyne / Staff writer

Students who love the student organization they’re involved with so much they never want to part are going to be able to shack up soon.

The Pitt-Greensburg residence life office has proposed a new system of housing that will give members of student organizations the opportunity to live together in the University Courts next year.

“We really want to give student organizations a chance to live together in an apartment-style setting,” said Kendra Sims, director of Housing and Residence life at Pitt-Greensburg.

“That way, even commuting members of the group would have a definite place to go and discuss events within the group,” Sims said. “Also, the organization would have a definite place to meet whenever they wanted to have a meeting.”

Any student organization is eligible for the housing as long as they are certified and recognized by the Student Government Association.

The student organizations would be given one quad section of the Courts. Each quad consists of four apartments.

Although the organizations will be required to fill all of the 16 bed spaces within the quad, not all of the residents must be in the organization. At least eight of the 16 bed spaces must be filled by members of the organization.

A major issue with that system is that some student organizations barely have even eight members.

“If there is a smaller group who wants to live together, but doesn’t have the required eight members, well, tell them to call me or Kendra, we can work with them,” said Troy Ross, director of housing and residence life.

The issue of coed living then arose.

“We weren’t really looking to go in the direction of coed students,” Ross said. “Coed students can live in the same quad together, but not in the same apartment or room.”

When the idea was presented Wednesday afternoon to the student House of Representatives, a few grumbles about living in the Courts floated through the crowd.

“We are expecting a larger-than-normal freshman class next year,” Ross said. “The best place for the student organization housing is the Courts.”

Ross asked the House what were the hesitations about living in the Courts. One Representative complained that it’s too difficult to walk from the Courts to campus, especially in the rain or cold weather. That student proposed moving the experiment to Robertshaw Hall instead because of the walking distances.

“Give me a break,” Sims said. “This isn’t about location, this is about allowing members of a group to chose who they want to live with instead of being assigned a random roommate.”

Westmoreland Hall also was proposed by another representative. Her reasoning was that more interaction occurs between students in Westmoreland Hall than in other residence halls.

Again, Sims seemed unimpressed with the reasoning.

Ross said the university’s policies on decorations would be more lenient to groups. He reasoned that as long as the decorations could express the student organization putting them up, he would agree to let them decorate the entire quad.

Beyond that, the students would still be subject to the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg student code of conduct policies.

Any student organization that was not present at Wednesday’s House meeting can pick up an application from Kendra Sims’ office. The applications must be filled out and returned to Sims by Wed. March, 5.