Yesterday I visited the campus where I completed my undergraduate degree. It's an easy trip, about fifty miles no matter which way you go, although the scenic route takes longer. The driving and the walking around among people I don't know are often head-clearing for me.

Although the day was clear, it was a bit more blustery than I like, so I didn't do much outdoor visiting. I did enter the building where my senior poetry seminar met. Built in the late 19th century, it has imposing brick work and the words "Model School and School of Practice" etched in stone across the front under the fourth floor dormers. The structure has been completely remodeled and renamed the "Charles and Mary Hash Center." Their names are in thin metal letters hung low near the side entrance. It's a center for technology education now. With the exception of the original wood banisters, everything inside is a bland computer gray. Yet when I climbed the half story flight of steps into the first floor hallway I heard a creak underfoot that instantly snapped me back.

I got lunch at the Student Memorial Center, a new (since I was there) structure that occupies the site of the venerable House of Pizza, now relocated two blocks down Frederick Street. I picked up the latest issue of the school newspaper, The Snapper. Most of the front page was devoted to a report of a recent decision by the Department of Housing and Residential Programs which will make it less certain that students with more than 60 credit hours accumulated (that would be students traditionally classified as "juniors") will be able to secure on-campus accommodations.

This has caused great hue and cry among those who fear they will be forced to find housing off campus. Forced? I had to laugh. Back in my day ... and how I try to avoid tales that begin that way. But back in my day, living off campus was the bright dream of just about everyone I knew. Those were the days of strict parietal rules under which female students had to be in their dorms by 11:00 (freshmen, at least through about 1966, at 8:00), sign out if they left the building after six, and were allocated five evenings per semester when they could be out until midnight (not to be used on a Sunday).

I managed to be able to live in an apartment on Frederick Street by somewhat misrepresenting to my parents the level of "adult" supervision and oversight this privately operated residence had. At "University Apts" there were no hours and visitation by men was supposed to be prohibited, a rule that was universally ignored, the only instance I can recall in my life where it's true that "everybody did it."

Conditions in campus housing are different now -- students are regarded as the adults they are and given responsibility for their own comings and goings, and I fully understand the desire of most of them to live on campus, where housing is cheaper than in private apartments and transportation, both the cost and the time involved, is not a problem.

As an alumna who remembers the bygone parietal rules days, I was amused by this story. As the parent of a prospective student, however, I was unnerved by a letter to the editor appearing on page seven. The writer (whose name is withheld, done sometimes if the writer fears repercussions) is concerned about recent incidents in the residence hall where he lives. (I'm assuming he's a male -- Diehm Hall was men's housing back in the day, but you never know now.) Such incidents include defecating and urinating in the hallways, burning candles with the door wide open, stealing furniture, and rolling kegs down the hallway. There was also a reference to "the incident with the soap dispenser" that was not explained.

These are the conditions some upperclassmen desperately want to be assured they can live in? This is what you can pay up to $10,000 a year for (that's the housing and meal plan fee; tuition for a Pennsylvania resident is $8000 a year, $20,000 for non-residents)?

Wow.