Duquesne University’s president, Charles J. Dougherty, was laying out the university’s financial situation to faculty members when he tried to explain why the university had some 300 empty beds in its residence halls. Juniors and seniors, he said, are choosing off-campus apartments. “We know why they move off-campus,” he continued. “They flaunt the state liquor laws, and they live a libertine lifestyle that is not allowed” in the Roman Catholic university’s dormitories.
The editors of The Duquesne Duke, however, had a different explanation. In an editorial, they said that more than half of the student newspaper’s staff members lived off campus, chiefly because the residence halls were too expensive. The editorial, which called the president’s words “ugly” and “unflattering,” went on to explain:
The primary reason to move off campus is price. Price, price, price. Room and board rates start at $5,000 and can reach $7,000. This means students are spending at least $1,250 each month, which is roughly double what a student renting a house on the South Side spends on rent, utilities and groceries.
On Friday, Mr. Dougherty apologized, sort of. The university knows “from multiple sources” that “life off campus allows for greater access to alcohol” and “for sexual behaviors that we cannot accept on the campus,” he said in a letter to the president of the student government. But, he added, “I did not mean to imply that every student who moves off campus does so for these reasons or for either of them. I know that is not true. And I apologize to anyone who took my remarks to imply that I believe this.”
