Pet-friendly dorm makes life pleasant at W&J
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Junior Jeremy Boughman, 21, of Lancaster, Ohio, craddles his cat Setsuna in the lobby of Monroe Hall at Washington & Jefferson College. The school has designated Monroe Hall as a pet-friendly dorm. -
Sophomore Michelle Kelly, 19, of Severn, Md., plays with Lady, her 3-year-old Yorkie-Poo, in her dormitory at Washington & Jefferson College.
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When Leslie Walker applied to Washington & Jefferson College, she remembers checking the mailbox frequently to see whether or not she would be accepted.
Three years later, her English bulldog Gus had a similar experience as he waited for his letter of acceptance to the college located in Washington, Pa.
Gus applied to the college because Ms. Walker wanted him to live with her for her senior year at the pet dorm that Washington & Jefferson established several years earlier. But, as with student applicants, not just any pet is accepted.
"There was all this paperwork. You have to submit veterinarian records and photos from all angles and I think I even wrote a letter that was from Gus," said Ms. Walker, 22, now an accountant with the Naval Audit Service in Washington, D.C.
Eventually Gus got his acceptance letter and he and Ms. Walker spent her senior year living together in Monroe Hall, the dormitory known informally as the "Pet House."
The dorm, and the college's guidelines for bringing and caring for pets on campus, garnered it the No. 3 spot on the "Top 10 Pet-Friendly Colleges of 2010" by the website www.petside.com.
The only other Pennsylvania college to make the list was Lehigh University in Bethlehem, which allows fish tanks in dorm rooms and one dog or cat in each Greek house, according to the petside website.
The No. 1 college on the list was Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla., which has three student pet complexes. In researching the best way to organize the Washington & Jefferson pet dorm, school officials visited Eckerd.
The pet house at Washington & Jefferson was the brainchild of college President Tori Haring-Smith, an animal lover and owner of several cats, who had the chance to have a kitten with her at Swarthmore as a freshman before the school did away with the practice.
Shortly after becoming president in January 2005, Dr. Haring-Smith introduced the idea to her board and the student body.
"This was something that I thought would be a good thing. It was the way I would have wanted to go to college. I knew we would have enough students here who would want that," she said.
First Published November 11, 2010 12:00 am
