Senior year is the time when Butler University students can form a group of friends to live with outside the Butler Bubble. This year, students are starting that process earlier.

Sophomores have already signed leases for their 2014-15 senior year.

Sophomore Ellen Clauss signed her lease a couple weeks ago, though that’s not what she expected to happen.

“We were just going to weigh our options, see what there was to offer and try to find the best deal out there,” Clauss said.

That changed when the landlord her group was working with planned to be in town to show them the house.

“He said, ‘We have two other people about to close in on this house, so you might want to think about it,’” Clauss said.

The combination of that pressure and Clauss’ group liking the house, its location and the landlord gave them reason to sign the lease, she said.

“It was very unexpected,” Clauss said. “It was a way faster process than we thought. We kind of jumped on it—maybe too soon. We’ll never know.”

Sophomore Molly Swigart signed her lease March 23.

“We toured the house on Friday the 22nd and signed the lease Saturday morning, the 23rd,” Swigart said. “We didn’t get a chance to shop around that much, but we really liked the house and location and had heard good things about the landlord. We figured we might as well bite the bullet.”

Swigart said her mom was upset at the house’s price, but Swigart said the benefits of the house were worth the cost. She also said her group is off-setting some of the costs by having six people live in a five-person house.

“It’s cheaper than Apartment Village, and it’s more fun,” Swigart said.

Scott Jacobson rents out 11 houses in the neighborhood around Butler’s campus. He said he has students asking him about leasing earlier and earlier every year.

Jacobson said this time of year, students are recommended to him by those currently living in one of his houses.

“(Signing a lease early) is just one less thing to worry about, but it pushes up the stress,” Jacobson said. “I’ve been trying to calm people down. You really don’t need to sign a lease within the next two months. There are enough houses to go around.”

He said one of the challenges of signing a lease this early could be if a tenant has to leave the group for some reason, but Jacobson said he works with such groups to help them replace the member.

Swigart said she has heard a lot of groups are worried about how relationships between group members could change before senior year.

“I’m not worried, but some people are, and you can’t be sure,” Swigart said. “Things can change. Someone could transfer or go abroad.”

Swigart said if that were to happen, her landlord said she and her housemates would be responsible for finding a replacement.

Jacobson said he has not had very many tenants drop out of a lease but added that the number may increase with the number of students signing leases early.

Overall, students have to find the house that’s right for them.

“You have to find a house you can see yourself living in that will fit your needs but also find a landlord that will work for you as well,” Jacobson said. “Find a landlord you can trust.”

Volunteering takes on a new meaning at Butler University with classes that have a service learning component. This component integrates both the traditional classroom setting and involvement in the Indianapolis community.

Butler has offered service learning since the mid -1990s, but more students will be exposed to the program now because of the Indianapolis Community Requirement, which requires all students to take a course involving active engagement in the Indianapolis community.

Service learning is one route to fulfill the ICR.

“The experience in the community is directly related to the academic learning goals,” said Donald Braid, the director of the Center for Citizenship and Community.

Service learning courses vary widely, but each class meets in the classroom and requires 20 hours of community service throughout the semester.

Spanish professor Terri Carney has taught one of the service learning courses for students enrolled in Spanish courses.

“(The purpose of service learning is) to connect the real world with the academic world, which has traditionally been sort of separated,” Carney said. “It has a profound effect on the vast majority.”

Senior Alex Tallentire has been involved with service learning most of his Butler career. He has been a student in a service learning class, a student advocate for community engagement and a teaching apprentice for a service learning course.

Tallentire said he is particularly excited about the  service learning partnership with Nora Elementary School. At the school, 40 percent of students are English as a New Language students.

Butler students will go to the school during its lunch hour to interact with and help ENL students with homework. Tallentire said it is important to have consistent interaction with the students and said 20 hours is needed.

Butler service learning contains many different ways to  engage the community.

A few of the partnerships that service learning has are with the Kaleidoscope Youth Center, the Martin Luther King Community Center and the Indianapolis School for the Blind and Visually Impaired.

Butler students go to these places and work with youth and seniors through tutoring, mentoring and providing companionship.

Sophomore Molly Swigart said her service learning class met with an Iraqi refugee family and also went to the Nur-Allah Islamic Center to go to service and volunteer at the weekend school.

Tallentire said students may find difficulty fitting the service learning requirement into their schedules.

“The one initial hesitation of students is, ‘Well, I’m not going to have time for this,’” Tallentire said.

Margaret Brabant, a professor of political science, has been using service learning pedagogy since the mid-1990s.

“Our classrooms are enhanced and enriched by the kind of work the students are doing in the community,” Brabant said.

More than 30 service learning courses are offered now at Butler.

Brabant said the virtues students acquire from their service learning experience are courage, empathy and humility.

“The ripple effect of this is extraordinary,” Brabant said.