CARA VAN METER
Living Editor
Junior Alysha Scotten wore jeans and a T-shirt the day she became Mrs. Hayes. And though her accessories did not include the traditional white veil or bouquet, she did wear a ring on her left hand. That was nearly two years ago, and today Hayes can be seen around campus in the same outfit she wore to her wedding; jeans, a T-shirt and her ring, but there’s one factor from her wedding day that is missing — her husband, Clifford. Though Hayes is one of several married undergraduate students at Pepperdine, she is also a member of a much more elite group of married undergrads who live on campus without their spouses. Hayes, whose husband is in the Air Force and stationed in Colorado Springs, Colo., lives in Lovernich apartments with three other female students.
Though Hayes and others like her are a minority when it comes to marital status on most college campuses, married undergraduate students are not as few and far between as one might expect. Senior Jenna (Clapper) Staples said she decided to get married while she was still in school because she thought it would be good to spend her first year of marriage around people both she and her husband knew instead of getting married and suddenly moving to a new place. Her husband Dave agreed that it helps to have mutual friends who knew him and Jenna before their marriage.
“It makes the transition into married life a lot easier,” said Dave, who graduated from Pepperdine in 2004 and now works in the Seaver College Admissions office.
Before the 1940s, married students were not just extremely uncommon on college campuses, they were even considered “disruptive influences” and often dismissed from college, according to a study conducted by Florida State University. However, in the first few decades following the end of World War II and with the return of veterans who wished to take advantage of their G.I. education benefits, colleges and universities across the United States saw a sharp rise in the number of married students enrolled in undergraduate programs.
By 1970, the study said, married students made up 21 percent of undergraduate students in American colleges and universities. Yet, in recent years, little research has been conducted to determine whether this trend continued as researchers at that time believed it would. Pepperdine officials said they were unable to report the exact number, or even a rough estimate, of the number of married students enrolled in Seaver College, since this data has not been collected.
This is somewhat surprising on a campus that is notorious for a student body that “never dates, but suddenly gets married.” The university offers several resources for students who are newly married or planning to get married. Counseling and marriage classes are available through the University Church of Christ, the Center for the Family and the Pepperdine Counseling Center.
Jenna Staples and her husband, Dave, took advantage of the Counseling Center’s premarital program before their wedding in June 2005 and said they found the experience helpful.
“It brought our attention to a few things that might have caused communication problems later,” Jenna said.
Counselor Heidi Gunderson said the “Prepare/enrich inventory” program offered for engaged or newly married students is highly individualized to each couple and aims to “strengthen the couple to utilize new tools for enriching their relationship at home as opposed to relying solely on long-term therapy.”
According to Gunderson, students seeking premarital counseling there account for about 10 percent of the center’s student clientele. In spite of the fair number of undergraduate couples who seek premarital counseling, though, only three undergraduate married couples actually live on campus, according to Housing Director Jim Brock. Brock said the married housing available on campus is primarily geared toward graduate students since Pepperdine’s graduate programs use it as a recruiting tool.
“The need for housing is certainly greater than what we have available,” Brock said, “So there are always quite a few students — undergrad and grad — who we are not able to place.”
Others, like Hayes and Senior Tarah Boulerice, continued to live with their peers in non-married on campus housing after their marriages to members of the armed forces. Boulerice, who now lives with her husband Mike in the George Page apartments, spent her first year of marriage apart from him and lived in the Drescher apartments with her friends while he was deployed in Afghanistan, finishing his tour of duty with the Army.
Boulerice said the transition to married life has gone smoothly since the dynamic of her relationship with Mike has always been that of a married couple.
“We’ve always been together, financially and everything else,” Boulerice said. “When I met Mike when I was 12 years-old, I told my mom and I wrote in my diary ‘I’m gonna marry him.’ I always knew.”
Boulerice said the most difficult part about balancing marriage with school and work is finding the time to spend together. Dave and Jenna Staples agreed.
“It’s hard to juggle classes and friends and marriage time-wise,” Jenna said. “Obviously I want to be on Dave’s schedule, but a lot of times my friends will study at night and then want to hang out at 10, which is my very un-college-like bedtime,” she added with a laugh.
Hayes said that finding time to spend together has been a major challenge for her as well, but that she and her husband Clifford talk on the phone several times a day.
“We’ve gone over on cell phone minutes many times,” Hayes said with a wry smile. “And he visited last fall. He said that he understands the hecticness of a college student’s life now. Our concepts of ‘not having any time’ are completely different.”
Hayes also said that it has been difficult to adjust to being completely independent from her parents now and to get used to the compromises that come with a new financial partnership.
Though her short engagement came as a surprise to friends and family, Hayes said both groups have since become more supportive of their marriage.
“My 6-year-old brother knows that Clifford is his brother now, but he thinks that means that Clifford and I are brother and sister too,” Hayes said, “And I’m like, ‘No, we’re like Mommy and Daddy now not brother and sister.’”
The 20-year-old liberal arts major said the only thing she regrets about her wedding day is that she has no pictures. She said she and Clifford plan to take their honeymoon trip over Spring Break and have a more traditional ceremony in the summer of 2007, after she graduates from Pepperdine.
Hayes also said the marriage changed her relationship with Clifford more than she had expected it would.
“It’s a huge step. Your lives are intertwined in everything,” Hayes said. “When you’re just dating, you can go out whenever you want and spend your money how you want. Now that we’re married we have to make all our decisions together.
“That’s not a bad thing necessarily—it’s just hard to adjust to,” Hayes continued, “It makes the distance easier though — and harder. Easier because our lives are so interconnected that sometimes it feels like we’re not really apart, but harder because it makes me want to be with him more.”
02-09-2006