Under D.5 of the Purchase College Student Code of Conduct your freedom to expression, comfort, and a sense of belonging are being crushed.

Imagine being able to walk into your living room, kicking your shoes off and placing them on your show cabinet, then laying down on your chic leather couch from Facebook Marketplace, placing the contents of your pockets on your mid century modern coffee table, and finally being able to get up and dust off your untouched books and dvds on your thrifted bookshelf. Any metrosexual or one with a flare of personality and interior design within them would find this dream imposable to reach under the tyrannical Purchase College Student Code of Conduct.

The focal point of criticism is the barring of outside furniture for apartment housing. The living space that we are paying for is currently expected to be left barren, possibly populated with lackluster provided couches that can hardly hold two people.

How can one transform a living space into a home with such limitations? Why are students barred from feeling at home in the own domiciles? Why must our living spaces look like hospital waiting rooms? 

The sense of safety, of comfort, of belonging that a well decorated living space is able to bring is remarkable. Whether you are a student who is from 30 minutes away or 30 hours away the feeling of being home should never feel out of reach. It should be where you rest your head day after day, class after class, it should be here at Purchase College.

The Purchase College website states, “Personal and professional creativity, inquiry, and expressiveness” as one of its values.  Hold Purchase College to their own standards and respect the creative expression that is displayed through the interior design. That they actually support an “Openness to emerging ideas that promote alternatives and variance”. The emerging idea proposed here is a revision to the Student Code of Conduct that includes the allowance of outside furniture to apartment style on campus housing. Such an amendment would promote more self-expression, more creativity, and a general improvement in the quality of living for all students.

Purchase College Student Code of Conduct   

Section D

5. Violates the use of college residence halls and apartments, including but not limited to non-approved microwaves or cooking appliances, bringing in non-designated college furniture, bicycles, refrigerators exceeding five cubic feet, smoke or fog machines, bed tents, water beds or other items that stress the physical structure of the building, high wattage electrical equipment (e.g. halogen lamps, air conditioners), outside antennas and satellite dishes.