When Counseling Moves: What Campus Location Means for Student Access and Privacy

College counseling centers must be accessible to students while also protecting client privacy, yet these goals can come into tension when services are located in highly visible campus spaces. This study examined students’ perceptions of counseling center placement following a temporary relocation from a centrally located student center to a quieter, less-trafficked area within a university library. Using a natural-experiment design, 172 students at a mid-sized public university completed parallel ratings of privacy, exposure, busyness, accessibility, centrality, comfort, and likelihood of help-seeking for both locations. Wilcoxon signed-rank tests indicated that the library site was perceived as significantly more private, less busy, more comfortable, and less likely to inhibit counseling attendance, whereas the student center site was viewed as more central. Perceived physical accessibility did not differ between locations. Kruskal – Wallis analyses revealed racial/ethnic, age, and class-status differences in perceptions of privacy, comfort, and centrality. Findings suggest that, once minimum accessibility standards are met, environmental discretion may be an important consideration alongside centrality when planning counseling center locations. As a single-center naturalistic comparison, results should be interpreted cautiously but offer practical implications for counseling center placement and campus planning.