By Esther Hoffman, general assignment reporter

When a major company announces that it's going to change its product line, its public relations department plans for months to come up with a solid plan to announce its changes in a way that the company's "publics" (customers, shareholders and the general public) will understand, agree with and applaud.

This is a simple process of public relations.

As a Communications student at Friends University, I have a dual emphasis in journalism and public relations. It's my last semester here, and I've learned a lot about both journalism and public relations.

One of the things I learned is that Friends, while a private, liberal arts college, is run like a business. The University has employees (teachers, faculty and staff) and customers (students and parents). The University has shareholders of a kind (alumni, board members and donors). Friends even has a public relations department, called the Communications office.

Friends is a prominent business in Wichita. In fact, our new president, T.J. Arant, would like Friends to become even more prominent by increasing enrollment from 3,000 to 5,000 students in the next few years.

On-campus student housing plays a part in that plan, especially for out-of-state or international students.

So, logically, Friends would have had many meetings evaluating student housing changes, talking with student representatives and generally getting people's opinions about changes to its housing fees. Right?

But the majority of students living on campus found out about the changes earlier this month during the housing interest sessions. And these students were told they had until Feb. 17 to turn in their applications for best chance of getting the housing choices they wanted next year.

What?

According to everything I have studied about public relations, Friends University's Residence Life department failed to meet a good standard of communication with its publics, the students. The introduction of these new housing rates was a public relations disaster.

Students were visibly and audibly upset in these meetings. Quite a few students raised their hands to ask questions and were told that they needed to talk to a Residence Life staff member after the meeting if they wanted an answer. One student asked why some questions couldn't be answered in front of the rest of the room if they were questions that enough people were asking, and the reply from Residence Life was still the same.

And I haven’t even started talking about the changes themselves.

So, what are these changes, and why are they making students mad? Crimson Chronicle Editor Bradi Schultz has written a comprehensive article detailing the changes so you can find out more, but I will summarize briefly below:

Housing changes for the 2012-13 school year:
• Switch from a varied fee based on apartment quality, age and size to a flat fee based on number of rooms.
• Increase in price for most students.
• Switch from a per-apartment/per-year fee to a per-student/per-semester fee.
• Limit of one person per room in Friends Village, which effectively cuts down the building’s maximum occupancy from 141 to 70.
• Introduction of a points-based system to prioritize who gets housing first.

That’s a lot of change to get used to in a 30-minute housing meeting.

In the housing meetings, we were told that the new flat rate housing fees are the norm in many colleges. We were told that that this new system makes more sense. We were told that the flat-rate fees would “level the playing field" and give an "equal opportunity" to all students who want housing. We were told that we were only upset because we weren't used to it, and that the change was good. We were told that in three years, no one will be upset about this system, because it will be in place.

I can say with assurance that I — along with an overwhelming majority of the on-campus students I've talked to about this — do not believe a lot of things I was told in the housing meeting.

I think there is something very wrong about how the new system is being implemented and how it was introduced. I am alarmed that I didn’t find out about these changes much earlier. I want to know why Residence Life told us right before housing intent forms are due.

I can also see glaring flaws in things said in the housing meetings.

The first one is about other colleges using flat-rate housing fees. You see, looking at Friends as a business again, we want to research our main market competitors to see what we're up against. So let's look at our two biggest local competitors: Newman University and Wichita State University. Guess what; Newman isn't using flat-rate pricing. Wichita State isn't using flat-rate pricing. Sure, if you look at the lists below, their pricing scales are more simplified than our current one, but note how few options they have compared to our four widely varied upperclassmen-only apartment buildings and more than 10 on-campus houses, plus Green Hall.

Newman's pricing per semester.
• Merlini Hall: single occupancy is $2,200; double occupancy is $1,700.
• Beata Hall: occupancy rate is $2,300.
• New Hall: suite single occupancy is $2,300; suite-style double occupancy is $1,800.
• Fugate Hall: apartment-style is $2,600; family/single style is $5,200.

WSU's pricing (including a meal plan) per year: 
• Fairmount towers: a double room is $6,400
• Brennan Hall: a double room is $4,200
• Wheatshocker apartments: a studio apartment is $6,400

That's all the info I could find because WSU's more detailed pricing sheet with many of the university's other prices is unavailable at this time, but the general principle is that living in a different building has a different cost. And this is a principle that the new flat-rate housing prices at Friends would throw out the window.

The concept of "leveling the playing field" is also severely flawed. In the first place, life will always be unfair. Some apartments will always be more expensive than others. Some schools will always be more expensive than others.

I think that flat-rate housing actually gives students a worse chance of getting an apartment they want at an affordable price. If people all had the same amount of money to spend on education and housing, then it might work, but our student population varies greatly in income.

The key word here is “affordable.” Finances are tight in this economy, and when students can’t get a reasonable price for something, they will start looking elsewhere. I’m graduating in May, so I’m already looking for apartments around Wichita. If I rent a house with roommates, my rent there will be much cheaper than living at Friends.

And now we come to my other concern: the new limit on roommates at Friends Village. As I mentioned before, one of the changes limits occupancy to one person per bedroom. Currently, Friends Village residents can double up with two per bedroom, and it works well, because the bedrooms are huge. But these changes cut the Village’s occupancy in half and increase costs for individuals who had doubled up.

What happens when Arant's plan for increased enrollment, especially from other states and countries, rolls into place? Where are we going to house all those new students?

I’m fairly certain that all the students looking into upperclassmen housing are adults. So it would be wonderful if we could be treated as adults and given the answers to our questions. If Friends University — as a business — is going to promote student housing like this, then students — as customers — are not going to buy it.