The Trailblazer Times

No students are forced to leave the school. For the price of $10 a day anyone and everyone is allowed to stay on campus. It's called winter housing, and every RE discussed it in the weeks leading up to Christmas break. While I understand that even that small $10 a day probably means that if you work an 8 hour day, you'll only end up with 7 hours of pay (1 hour to pay the $10) that's still quite cheap compared to an apartment in town.

Just for the sake of strict accuracy, Winter Housing does not begin until after the first of January.

From the day after finals ends until the beginning of Winter Term (usually the Monday of the first full week of January) the dorms are completely closed to all students for reasons undetermined.

After those two weeks, you then have the option of paying $10 a day to sleep in the room that you have already paid for, that has all your belongings in it, and that will not possibly be used by anyone else before the Spring Semester starts.

As someone who has been at MNU for a while, I also have doubts about the efficacy of this policy and how it is implemented.

And for any students who wish to take a class during Winter Term, it is very impractical unless you have a few extra hundred dollars laying around for housing, food, and credit hours.

Just for the sake of strict, strict accuracy, it's actually $12 a night to stay on campus. Furthermore, in regards to the money you pay to rent a room from the school, that goes towards in-semester housing, nothing more, nothing beyond. When students are out of the dorms, the heating system for the rooms is turned off (I'm not sure if they do the same for the water heater). Therefore, if students remain on campus we have to make sure they have heated rooms and water. In the real world this costs money, they're called "utilities." We've checked with other campuses, specifically the other Nazarene schools, and we are the cheapest and most lenient out of the other colleges. All this to say, MNU is not the only one who does this, in fact it's quite common.