Northwest Missouri State University - Tower Yearbook (Maryville, MO)

Page 25 text:

Suitcase Syndrome students vacate the ' Ville to spend time with family and friends, work a hometown job or search for more exciting weekend entertainment By Scott Albright c uitcasing. It ' s been a Northwest I stereotype for years, and for good . reason. When the weekend came, a vast majority of students left Mary ville, packing only the necessities for their two-day vacation. On any given Friday afternoon one could stand outside any residence hall and witness the droves of students leaving for home. Many raced to their cars carrying heaping baskets of laundry, while others chose to travel lightly. But no matter what they lugged along, they wasted no time in getting out of the ' Ville. My window overlooked the Hudson parking lot, Jennifer Smith said. By 5 p.m. on Friday it was always nearly empty. There were many reasons given for the so-called suitcase syndrome at Northwest. Some students said they had boyfriends or girlfriends at home. Others said they lived close enough to home that it was convenient. Some even gave the desire for a good home-cooked meal as an excuse for leav- ing. However, many students felt there was more to it than that. There weren ' t enough weekend activities on or off campus for the students, Echo Lowther said. There were a lot of parties, but for those who didn ' t like that kind of thing it got boring. Residence Hall Association, Campus Activities Programmers and other campus organizations realized the problem and tried to schedule activi- ties to accommodate the students. The problem was evident, so we wanted to give those students staying on campus something to do, Barb Janssen, RHA adviser, said. Ulti- mately we hoped the scheduled activities would keep more students here. Most students said they recognized the efforts made by these organizations, but felt there need- ed to be more done. The activities scheduled were fine, but there needed to be more variety and also more than one event each weekend, Smith said. If a movie was shown on Friday night that was great, but then there wasn ' t any- thing going the rest of the time. Most stu- dents wouldn ' t stay for just a movie so the response wasn ' t good. Smith added that the majority of those stu- dents who stayed in Maryville on weekends stayed either because of parties or because they simply lived too far away to go home. Jeff Hoover cited another reason for the suitcasing phenomenon. I had a lot of friends who went home on weekends to work, he said. I thought a lot of students chose Northwest because it was close to home and they were able to keep the jobs they had before coming to college. Yet for some students their frequent trips home may have had underlying emotional ties. Homesickness was a problem that caused some students to go home often, ac- cording to Angela Knight of the University Counseling Center. Homesickness caused a problem at times, not only for freshmen, but even upperclass- men, she said. College-age students were at a big growing stage in their lives. They realized they were growing up and were scared. This caused some to go home more often. For whatever reason, students continued to race home on weekends, carrying on what has become one of Northwest ' s biggest stero- types. Those students who regularly stayed in Maryville may have faced solitude, but they never had to worry about a place to park. A WITH ANOTHER WEEK of classes complete, Susie Beach and Gary Pilgrim put the top down and leave Maryville to spend the weekend at home. Photo by Brandon Russell Suitcasing 21

Page 24 text:

20 Suitcasing

Page 26 text:

22 The Rainmakers