Most dorm residents at Southeast Missouri State University will show up this fall with bedding, a laptop, a backpack — typical accessories. A few dozen others will tote something fuzzier.
The school in Cape Girardeau, Mo., is creating pet-friendly floors in one residence hall, where students may bunk with roommates of the feline, petite canine or “small caged animal” variety. The decision came in response to requests from prospective students and parents for such a perk, according to university officials, who hope it will help smooth some newcomers’ transition from home to higher education.
With this move, Southeast joins a growing group of colleges that offer housing to students with critters. They include the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which has allowed cats in some dorms since 2000; Pfeiffer University in North Carolina; the University of Northern Colorado; Eckerd College in Florida; and Stephens College, a women’s school in Columbia, Mo., with a website that boasts, “Here, we treat pets like royalty.”
College officials say students today retain closer ties to home than those of previous generations, in part because of social media. That can make the move tougher, and permitting pets is one way of “integrating students best into the learning environment,” said Debbie Below, Southeast’s vice president for enrollment management and student success.
The school, near the Mississippi River, will make space for about 70 pets in one of its 21 residence halls, Below said. They will be distinct from the 25 or so service and emotional support animals that, as required by federal housing and disability laws, already live in various dorms. The university’s experience with those animals made officials feel confident they could lay out a pet welcome mat, Below said.
Officials also hope pet-friendly floors might attract more students with service or emotional support animals, which Below said occasionally present challenges in regular dorms. “You could have somebody on that floor who’s afraid of animals or has a serious allergy, and you’re going to end up moving somebody,” she said. “We’re hoping that this is one solution.”
Pet-friendly housing rules tend to be similar from college to college, designed to prevent problems caused by animals in shared spaces. At Southeast Missouri, which has about 11,500 students, critters must be family pets, quiet, housebroken and have a roommate’s OK. They will not be allowed in bathrooms, and to protect residents with pet allergies, owners may not use laundry facilities to wash pet bedding or toys. The University of Northern Colorado, though, dealt with this issue by designating washing machines and dryers for that specific purpose.
Below emphasized that Southeast Missouri’s pet pilot program may need adjustments. At least one school that tested such a program, Lincoln Memorial University in Tennessee, abandoned it after two years.
At the other end of the spectrum is Eckerd, a liberal arts college in St. Petersburg, that has permitted dorm pets since the 1972-73 school year. James Annarelli, vice president for student life and dean of students, said he suspects it was driven by student demand.
These days, Eckerd has under 1,900 students, but 229 registered pets on campus. Of those, 132 are dogs or cats, and the remainder represent an exotic array of species, spokeswoman Robbyn Hopewell said.
“We have some spiders,” Hopewell noted, reading from a spreadsheet of campus animals. “It looks like our most popular lizard is a bearded dragon; there are five of those. Ferrets, fish, gerbils, frogs, guinea pigs, hamsters, hedgehogs, rabbits, rats, unspecified reptiles. We’ve got 23 snakes, one sugar glider and seven tortoises or turtles.”
There once was a pair of ducks that lived with a pair of roommates. “The ducks actually graduated two years ago,” Hopewell said. (Their humans did, too.)
Twice a year, a veterinarian visits Eckerd to do checkups. Once a year, a pastor comes to the school, which is affiliated with the Presbyterian church, to bless pets in honor of Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals. Each spring, Eckerd holds a commencement ceremony just for the animals.
Even students without pets of their own cite the pro-pet posture as a draw, Annarelli said. “It is, for them, a sign of the kind of welcoming community this is,” he said.