Moving out of campus housing will be a little less hectic this year, as students will have an extra five hours to pack up the wagon and head off from campus.
After a survey last year showed widespread dissatisfaction with the quick turnaround between exam period and the move-out deadline, the Undergraduate Assembly and Housing and Conference Services teamed up to extend the deadline by five hours - a change that they estimate will give 98 percent of students at least 24 hours to pack before they have to be out of the dorms.
The addition of five hours is a welcome change. The end of exams requires not just time to pack, but time to decompress as well. The end of exams is always an extremely stressful time, and the new extension still doesn't provide enough time to decompress, say good-bye to friends and pack. Also, most parents prefer to travel to Penn on or near weekends - especially parents of the sizable contingent of Penn students from outside the tristate area - and the 5 p.m. deadline doesn't solve this larger issue, as move-out day is still a Wednesday.
While there are financial barriers to further extending the move-out deadline to Thursday at noon, we feel that a second extension would provide enormous benefits. All students would have enough time to pack, and parents who wish to move their students out on the weekends would have to pay one day less of an extension.
Extending the move-out deadline again is undoubtedly a paperwork hassle, but just having the current extension is a larger one.
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