New living options will significantly shift housing patterns next year, according to the Office of Residential Life and the most recent general room selection (GRS) options. The shifts, if successful, will dictate residential life for the years to come, according to Rich DeCapua, Assistant Director of Residential Life.

The construction of the new Fauver Field frosh dorms will open space for upperclassmen in existing residential buildings such as the Butterfields, Hewitt, and Nicolson. Consequently, the chances for incoming freshmen to live in a single room will be greatly diminished.

Changes are not limited to Foss Hill. Wesleyan will unveil two senior prototype houses, spacious units designed to become attractive alternatives to senior houses. Along with the new 100-person Fauver Field Upperclass Hall, the prototypes are intended to replace the 118 In-Town rooms, which will not be available to students next year.

Other significant renovations are being made throughout campus, most noticeably in LoRise, where all 10-person units will be converted into two 4-person units this summer. This will eliminate a total of 26 rooms. The University is also spending a large part of next year’s maintenance budget on lounge and kitchen renovations in WestCo, Eclectic, and 200 Church St.

Overall, the changes will yield an additional 170 beds, allowing ResLife to drastically scale back its off-campus housing program from 200 students to only 40. Housing on campus will also be more centralized after In-Town is officially sold; the buyer is presently undergoing a diligence review, according to Marcia Bromberg, Vice President for Finance and Administration.

“We have entered into a contract to sell In-Town to a developer who plans to turn the complex into ‘high-level’ apartments,” Bromberg said. “If all goes well the sale will be completed sometime in June.”

Although housing selection will not occur until late April, significant changes in the composition of certain buildings are imminent. Specifically, 160 more beds in the Butterfields, Nicolson, and Hewitt will be open during GRS that in previous years were set aside for freshmen. The result will be a heavier presence of sophomores in these areas, according to DeCapua.

Preliminary numbers from ResLife indicate that singles available in the GRS will increase about 50 percent, while singles for frosh will decrease about 60 percent. DeCapua said some floors in Butterfields, Nicolson and Hewitt will be all-sophomore, while freshmen will be systematically distributed throughout the other halls.

“We’ve designated rooms in such a way that it’s not overpowered by sophomores,” he said.

The addition of the 166-person, all-freshman Fauver dorm is responsible for the shift; the new composition in the existing dorms also addresses concerns that sophomores were having trouble finding singles close to each other when houses/apartment units were unavailable, DeCapua said.

Consequently, only 30 doubles will be available for upperclassmen in the Butts, Hewitt, and Nicolson, according to the most recent GRS options. Of those, almost all of them are two-room doubles or large one-room doubles, DeCapua said. Doubles will also be available for upperclassmen in WestCo, which will be 50 percent frosh next year.

DeCapua cautioned students not to dwell on percentages or perceived shifts, however.

“I’m hesitant with numbers,” he said. “Students need to base their decisions on what’s best for them. It’s more important to live with the people you want to than the [residential] house you want.”

That advice may be more pertinent to rising juniors and seniors, many of whom may be in search of a senior house but anxious about their chances. DeCapua said the new Fauver Field Upperclass Hall, which houses 100 students in five person apartments, and the senior prototypes which house 24 students, are intended to assuage those fears.

“You’re talking about some really nice houses in some really prime locations,” he said.

The new buildings are also designed to have a trickle-down effect by seniority. Juniors and seniors will now have several attractive options, from the Fauver suites to the renovated LoRise units, DeCapua said. Those choices will then dictate what is available to rising sophomores and their chances at units in HiRise or LoRise.

According to DeCapua, the key is not to base one’s decision on past experiences, joking that every year students think there is a magic number for the size of a housing group.

“It’s not a good position because it’s going to be totally different this year,” he said. “Do what’s good for you, not what happened last year.”

For the longer outlook, DeCapua said much depends on the success of the senior prototypes as an attractive alternative to the senior houses, which have been falling apart in recent years. A five-year plan calls for selling four to eight senior houses every year, as long as there are enough replacement beds, according to Bromberg.

But Wesleyan Administration cautioned that the selling process will not be drastic. Instead, the University will be adding three senior wood-frame houses this year that have been bought new or renovated by Construction Services. Altogether there will be 578 rooms in senior houses next year, not counting apartments or suites, in comparison to 543 this year.

DeCapua hopes that in the long term students will see the economic and programmatic benefits of the new buildings.

“The reality is we don’t have enough houses for seniors,” he said. “Everyone knows that. Is it smarter to fix them up at extreme costs or build new? Instead of building a house up to code, we can build three different prototypes.”

Because the prototypes house more students than existing wood frames, members of the AWARE community group have suggested that the University return houses on Home Avenue to non-student housing. This would be in line with the plans to concentrate more non-graduate students in the Fountain and Warren Street area. According to Mike Whaley, Dean of Student Services, the University would not take action for several years, and then only at a gradual pace.

“While AWARE has signaled a desire, we don’t want to have a mass evacuation from Home Ave,” he said. “It would be something that we take a long time to consider since we need to ensure that we have enough beds to replace any houses we return to non-student residence.”

While students had significant input on the new construction, they have had less say over long-term plans like selling houses, according to WSA members. The topic has not been addressed at Undergraduate Residential Life Committee (URLC) meetings, and the WSA is working with President Doug Bennet to secure a student spot on the Master Plan Executive Committee, which oversees things like the selling of houses.

Amidst the shifts, some parts of ResLife will remain virtually unchanged next year. No program houses will be added, for example, despite discussion at the beginning of the year to introduce a new one.

Overall, DeCapua said the upcoming year will be an important one for determining the overall structure of housing.

“This is going to keep dictating how we do things,” he said.