Presenters
Abstract
Aspen Heights is a unique and rapidly expanding housing complex that targets the Greek community at large universities. Unlike other housing sites for college students, Aspen takes pride in offering full-sized houses, resort-style amenities, a party-hearty attitude, and free trips to help impoverished African communities. Given the immense popularity of this new model and its 11 complexes built in major college towns across the United States, it is important to understand how this community employs its brand of “Aspen Culture” to revolutionize student housing. This paper applies Campbell’s principles for rhetorical analysis to the Aspen Height’s apartment community brand. Specifically, this work aims to determine how purpose, audience, persona, tone, structure, supporting materials, and strategies collectively shape and reinforce the Aspen Heights environment and culture. This paper contributes to extant scholarship by demonstrating the ways in which the Aspen Heights brand highlights the changing relationship and power-dynamics between landlord and tenants.