Scholarships often go the best and brightest students.

Yet under the current policy, these students are treated most like children.

Central Michigan University should abandon its requirement that students on scholarship must live for two years in campus residence halls.

There are many good reasons for students to stay on campus for a second year. Studies showing a correlation between higher grade points and residence can make this point.

But these do not form good reasons to require students to live on campus for two years.

By students’ second year, it is reasonable to expect that they have a decent grip on college life. The university offers to other students the ability to live off campus. There is no reason to think scholarship students are any different – they at least should be capable of handling the responsibility.

The stronger argument, however, is that if those students have to live on campus, they likely will fare better academically.

Because they are scholarship students, the university especially wants them to do well. And it’s certainly within the university’s rights to include the requirement.

One need not interpret the requirement as an insult to scholarship students.

But it does impinge on their ability to choose freely where they would like to live.

There is value in having this option – having the ability to make the choice. It’s part of being an adult.

All second-year students should have this choice. They should be encouraged strongly to live a second year on campus; many studies support this recommendation. The university can make an effort to make students aware of this fact.

But the requirement is paternalistic.

It is the university thinking it is acting in the best interest of students, without taking into account what students think is in their best interest.

A requirement is reasonable during students’ first years, during which they face adjustments so jarring that the university can and should intervene.

But by students’ second year, these reasons no longer apply. Scholarship students can earn As off campus. They can remain involved in organizations.

If they prefer to live off campus, that should be their call.

And no study can negate this.

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