Living On-Campus FAQs

What is it like to live on-campus? Any tips?

Living on campus is different than living at home in lots of ways. Sharing a room, sharing a bathroom with 30 people, managing your own time, taking care of bills, keeping up with courses, having a social life…well, there's just not one right way to manage it all. Here are three tips to start you off:

• Reach out to your roommate to plan for how you'll live together.
  Who will bring what? Consider personal preferences—early riser, late owl, study in the room, study in the library, lots of friends over all the time, enjoy quiet times alone. Then, complete the roommate agreement your RA will provide to you in the first week or two. It's good to talk about those little irritations early on and work out a plan before they become bigger issues. Be sure to include a few hours of alone time in the room for both of you during the week.
   
• Plan to & ATTEND the orientation events!
  Why? You'll meet other students. You'll have something to talk/text about with other students when you meet them in class or out & about in the hall. You'll find out about campus stuff and how to successfully resolve problems you'll likely have.
   
• Check with friends or relatives that have a year or two in college.
  What advice would they give? When you get to campus, check in with your Week On Orientation (WOO) Leader and Resident Advisor. As helpful and experienced students, they will have some great ideas for you, too.

What are quiet hours and when are they?

While living in the residence halls, all residents are expected to respect other residents' right to study or sleep so each hall has 24 hour "courtesy hours." However, most students are settling in for the evening, sleeping or studying by these evening hours; therefore, "Quiet Hours" are:

Weeknight Quiet Hours: Sunday–Thursday 10:00pm – 9:00am

Weekend Quiet Hours: Friday–Saturday 12:00 midnight – 10:00am

How much is laundry?

We have laundry facilities in every building, some shared by the building in community rooms in the basement and others right on your floor!  Laundry is $1.00 each for washing and drying and is paid through your Baseline account on your Stout Blue Card.  We also use a service call Laundry View - on which you can track the progress of your laundry on your phone, set alerts for when it's complete, and check to see how busy your laundry room is!  For more information on Laundry View, check out the dashboard.

What can I do if I don't get along with my roommate?

We do our best to place you with someone that matches your learning and social styles based on your preferences (which you fill out before coming to Stout and have the opportunity to change every year with your contract), yet sometimes it is difficult to click and from time to time things just don't work out.

Our RAs are trained to help you through possible roommate issues and we encourage you to try to work through them before making a room change. Try to talk it out, or revisit issues, with a roommate agreement. Your RA can help you plan for this conversation.

If in the end the chemistry just isn't there, talk with your RA and RLC to find out what options are available to you.  Please note that you can't force your roommate out of the room if s/he doesn't want to leave. Yet, you can request to move to another space.

Up until a few days before move-in when a campus-wide room freeze goes into effect, a student may search and request an open space through the Housing Gateway.  After your campus arrival, check with your RLC regarding open spaces across campus.

What happens when someone gets "written up"?

"Written up" is another way to say writing an incident report. Incident reports are written if a policy violation may have occurred or when a fire alarm happened or when a bathroom mirror was damaged. An "incident" occurred and it is documented.

If a student was involved in the incident and a violation may have occurred, the student will be contacted by a University Housing staff member or another University official for more information. Follow this link to learn more about Housing Conduct.

What's an RA?

A Resident Advisor (RA) is a returning student who lives on your floor and receives a specialized training to assist you. They are aware of campus resources and will encourage you to get involved and get to know all of the members of the floor.

There are a couple of other students in mentor positions that you'll meet early in your time at Stout:

A WOO Leader is your orientation leader. As a returning student, their job is to help you learn more about being a Stout student.

An Academic Resource Coordinator (ARC) is a returning student who lives in your hall and is responsible for planning and assisting with academic and life skills throughout the year.

To learn about other student positions employed by University Housing, check out our Staff page.

Something isn't working in my room; how do I get it fixed?

If the issue can be addressed within a day or so, click on the Maintenance Request on the Housing Gateway to address a hall problem ranging from a broken light bulb in your room to a clogged bathroom sink. Ask the front desk staff or your RA if you have any trouble or if the issue isn't addressed in a couple of days.

If this issue is an emergency or could cause extensive damage (such as broken water pipe or flooding toilet), contact your RLC or other hall staff immediately.