In a perfect world, JC would be able to offer dorm living for international students and wouldn’t have to worry about liability issues, dorm parents, and weekly itineraries. Unfortunately, having dorms for JC’s international students is just not practical.
Even though the dorm solution is not practical, JC has just gotten approval for 14 to 15 international male students to live in St. Joseph’s Hall. It is soon to be renovated into dorms for the 2013-2014 school year.
Ideally the dorms would be fantastic: they would broaden the international student horizon that the administration is hoping to have and it would create a great life and learning experience for the international students. But logistically, JC just doesn’t meet the standards.
The plans were already denied once last year by the Archdiocese for liability issues because “dorms are all new territory for the Archdiocese” and they weren’t sure how to deal with it, according to Principal Madelyn Ball. It should have been a red flag to the school that there may be a reason why no other school in the Archdiocese has had students live on campus.
One flaw with the plan is the decision on who would stay with the students. Previously, Ball had stated that she hoped to have a young couple that would live with the students and have access to drive the students on a mini bus to places besides the school campus.
Realistically speaking, no young couple would be willing to do this. Sure, colleges have dorm parents with similar responsibilities, but they are responsible for college age students who speak their language, not 15 high school boys who may not be perfect in English.
Another issue with the dorms is meals. The students could have breakfast and lunch at the cafeteria, but what about dinner and snacks?
According to Director of Facilities Stewart Walker, once the kitchen in the dorms is updated, it will be a commercial kitchen in which full meals can be cooked.
If the students were to cook for themselves, they wouldn’t have anything to cook with since JC, like every other normal school, doesn’t have a grocery store on campus.
Also, what would the international students do on the weekends? Students who are residents of Harford County already have a tough time finding things to do on the weekend. And even if the students find something to do, there will still only be one couple to drive all 15 of the boys.
The dorms would be ideal if everything worked out perfectly and JC found a young couple that would be willing to be dorm parents, solved the issue of meals, and had weekend plans for the students. But having dorms isn’t realistically possible.