Short waitlist could result in vacancies

Only 24 students remain on the housing waitlist for the spring semester compared to hundreds at this time last year, a Resident Life official said.

The 11 females and 13 males still on the list have a good shot at receiving housing as more students withdraw from housing before the first day of spring classes, Resident Life Manager of Assignments and Public Inquiry Erin Iverson said. Resident Life has already offered 900 students housing in the spring, including 300 last week. Of those, about 170 chose not to receive housing, she said.

Iverson said it was still too early to tell if there will be vacancies at the beginning of next semester, but if the rest of the students get off the waitlist and the housing cancellations continue, it is a possibility.

"Our goal, obviously, is to open up for the spring semester with as few vacancies as possible," she said.

Vacancies could cause a loss of revenue for the university. Room and board cost $9,108 this year, according to the university's website.

The specific financial consequence of possible vacancies is hard to judge, but "the smaller number of vacancies, obviously, the less impact that would have financially," Iverson said.

Iverson credited Resident Life's increased outreach with getting more people off the waitlist sooner.

"One of the things that we've been people off the waitlist sooner.

"One of the things that we've been doing, really, since last summer is just more actively communicating with students," she said. "The earlier we hear from students, the better off it is for everyone who's waiting for assignment."

Residence Hall Association President Alex Beuchler, a senior government and politics major, said she has noticed Resident Life striving to keep in touch with students since more than 600 students were kicked off the campus in spring 2007.

"I've definitely seen an increase in really trying to be very transparent and lay everything out early so that students are informed about what their realistic situation is," Beuchler said.

Increased communication could partly account for the decreased housing demand this year that allowed the university to house 350 transfer students, said Spiro Dimakas, chair of the RHA's ReLATe Committee, which works with Resident Life.

"The increased communication and the doomsday predictions were kind of very shocking to students," Dimakas said. "The news that very few students would get on-campus housing kind of led to this massive rush of students going off campus."

There are about 220 vacancies across the campus, Iverson said, up from about 50 at the end of October. A little more than 8,000 students are in on-campus housing, she said, not including South Campus Commons or University Courtyards.

At the same time last year, more than 8,300 people lived on the campus, Iverson said, but capacity was also higher due to forced triples and lounges converted into quads.

Despite the short waitlist for the spring, Resident Life projections released in October indicate that about 600 rising juniors will be unable to get on-campus housing for the fall next year.

The increased availability of housing this year is an anomaly caused by unexpectedly low freshmen housing demand, Resident Life Associate Director Jan Davidson said.

"We certainly believe it's a one time kind of thing," he said.

Next year, leasers of Commons 7, which will open for the spring semester, could boost on-campus housing demand further as they look for a place to live in the fall, Davidson said.

New housing is needed to solve the long-term housing problem, he said.

But until that happens, students will have to make do.

"It's not like it's a new shock; it is a number that we've been faced with before," said Taylor Cole, a sophomore English and secondary education major who serves on the ReLATe Committee. "And I really think that the school is doing as best it can to get as many of us on campus as possible."

"I do know that people are keeping that eye open looking out for off-campus housing," Cole added.

In lieu of an end to housing problems, communication with Resident Life is key for students, Beuchler said.

"It's obviously not the perfect first answer," she said. "Before that is getting more housing, which clearly we've been doing, but not enough to satisfy everyone yet. I think that it has helped to really prepare students based on whatever the current situation is."

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