Resident Life dropped 639 juniors and seniors from on-campus housing Tuesday, telling them by e-mail that housing next year is so overcrowded they should seek housing off the campus.
The move, which means the only seniors next year living on-campus will likely be housed in South Campus Commons and the Courtyards, elevates this year's housing crunch to a crisis that has sent hundreds of students scrambling for leases and landlords. Even after turning away the students by e-mail this week, Associate Director of Resident Life Jan Davidson said dorms are now overbooked by 600 beds.
Although Resident Life expects some cancellations that would reduce that number, hundreds of double rooms next year will probably be converted to triples, and, in extreme cases, lounges will be converted as well. Davidson cited a dramatic increase among freshman and sophomores requesting to remain in on-campus housing this fall as the driving force behind the drastic measures.
"It's a problem we have to prepare contingency plans for," he said. "We won't just sit here waiting for them to get solved."
Davidson said this marks the first time the university has ever excluded an entire crop of seniors from housing, but says it had to do so because Resident Life policy passed in 2000 by Residence Hall Association members gives first priority to "rising" freshmen, sophomores and incoming freshmen.
"I almost couldn't believe it when I came back from work and my roommates said that we don't have housing," said junior math major Justin Senseney, who had planned to return to his Hartford suite.
Although juniors received an early warning letter from Resident Life in February, as they had over the past two years, Seseney said he disregarded the message because Resident Life had never acted on the threat before. Now, facing a city housing market already operating below a two-percent vacancy, Senseney said he has no idea where he's going to live next year. "I'm not sure what I can do," he said.
Senseney wasn't alone. The announcement also killed the housing hopes of transfer students, who have traditionally endured long wait lists to get into dorms, and stunned juniors who have lived for almost three years on the campus. They are all now - and some quite unexpectedly - facing an unpredictable rental market.
Facebook groups sprang up in protest of the announcement, proclaiming that "ResLife lied to us all." But a poster fallen in the dirt outside the South Campus Diner may have summed up students' feelings best.
"ResLife f---ed seniors, they will screw you too!!! We must take action!!!"
Davidson said Resident Life has spent the past two days asking local landlords to set aside rooms for students outed from dorms, but because some started signing leases as early as January, openings are filling fast.
A University Town Center spokesman said the apartment complex was busy with prospective renters all day, and Shelley McClean, a manager at the University House apartments, said Resident Life's decision would probably create a mad rush to snatch up their last rooms.
"We're expecting to fill up the apartment buildings pretty quickly," she said.
Senseney said he worried that Resident Life's efforts to work with landlords might not be enough. And after three years of living on the campus, he said he knew little about the city housing landscape.
"All I know is that the information provided was minimal," he said.
The decision's immediate consequences are unclear, but District 2 Councilman Bob Catlin said the long-term effects could be devastating to a city that's struggled to keep up with robust housing demand, despite new apartment complexes opening in or near the city for seven straight years. The city has no new student projects planned, he said.
The announcement also comes after the University System of Maryland's governing body, the Board of Regents, rejected the university's proposal to add a new dorm last year because they gave preference to academic buildings, Davidson said. The possibility of resubmitting the proposal is unlikely, he said.
"They just basically told College Park 'You're stuck,'" he said.
Contact reporters Kristi Tousignant and Ben Slivnick at slivnickdbk@gmail.com.
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