As a result of an unexpected increase in student enrollment, the Office of Residential Life has scrambled to deal with the high demand for on-campus housing. ResLife has reopened six program houses previously slated to be sold, formed temporary triples for freshmen in Butterfield C, and offered off-campus housing status to more students than usual.
“We anticipated at General Room Selection [GRS] that we would have about 30 to 40 sophomores that didn’t have housing, which is traditionally what’s happened,” said Director of ResLife Fran Koerting. “We had over 100, which was our first shock that this isn’t normal—we didn’t understand why this is happening.”
Two former program houses which were moved to the Foss Hill dorms—344 and 316 Washington St.—are now home to 24 sophomores who were left without housing after last year’s GRS. Breaking from previous practice, the Residential Advisors to the underclassmen are living separately, at 202 and 230 Wash.
“I went into a housing group with six people, and we got one of the worst picks, so now we’re all split up,” said Lisa Drennan ’09. “I know one person in my house by coincidence and it’s much further away campus than I thought I would be.”
The houses are without internet or cable access since they were stripped of their routers during the summer, when it was assumed that no one would be living there.
“It’s really frustrating to do drop/add when the closest place to use a computer is Fisk,” said Alicia Garrison ’09. “They were selling these houses and changing things around before they knew how many people they needed to house.”
Garrison noted that while some of the rooms in her house are spacious, hers is arguably inhabitable.
“I’m in 316 Wash. up on the third floor, in the attic, in the back of the house, and every room in this house is amazing except for mine,” she said.
She explained that due to her room’s small size, she has been forced to move some of her belongings and furniture into the hallway.
ResLife turned four more program houses—200 College St. and 390, 394, and 400 High St.—into senior houses due to their smaller capacity of five to six students. According to Koerting, the University will not suffer financially from the inability to immediately sell these houses, as none were going to be sold within the next year.
At the other end of the spectrum, there are 66 students living in triples, and ResLife intends to break up the groups as soon as spaces open up in other housing arrangements.
“We’re hoping that, at the absolute latest by the beginning of second semester, we’ll have spaces for any of the students still in triples to de-triple,” Koerting said. “If we find out at the end of this week that there are a number of students who haven’t returned to campus, we will use those spaces to de-triple, and for those students that leave throughout the semester, we’ll use those spaces, also.”
The students living in triples are discounted $50 per week for as long as they stay in the triple. If they stay in it for the entire year, the total discount will be $1600.
This is the first time since the 2001-2002 school year that ResLife has used triples to accommodate freshmen. At that time, Clark Hall was being renovated, and admitted students were informed very early in the admittance process that they would be housed in triples. This time around, some students said they had not been notified until mid-August.
As a final measure, in early August ResLife broke with its earlier housing policy and permitted more students to move off campus, as communicated in an all-campus email Aug. 1. In total, 30 students have off-campus housing status, including several sophomore groups.
Molly O’Connell ’09 and Hannah Jackson ’09 drove to Middletown to find an apartment the day that they heard they had been granted off-campus status and would not have to be housed in 344 Wash. At that point, they only had three weeks to find a place to live, but they were able to find housing on William St.
“Housing off campus is much cheaper,” O’Connell said. “Our place is a good size—two bedrooms with a kitchen and a living room. It’s $800 a month and, including utilities and furnishing, it’s still $1500 cheaper than on-campus housing—versus us living in a one-room double way at the corner of campus.”
Campus housing complications can in part be traced to the University’s over enrollment of approximately 78 students. The larger-than-expected student body is the result of a combination of causes, including a increase in those choosing to continue at Wesleyan, fewer students studying abroad during this fall’s semester, and an increase in matriculating transfer students.
According to Senior Associate Provost and Dean of Continuing Studies Billy Weitzer, the University projects the number of students based on how many freshmen the Admission Office predicts will matriculate and the retention rates of a given class over the past several years.
“The actual number of enrollments over our projection is 30,” Weitzer said, of the number developed by the University. “If we have 30 more students right now, the difference is 1.1% and that is as accurate as we would expect our projections to be.”
The higher enrollment numbers can also be traced to the significantly smaller number of students studying abroad. This year, 112 students went abroad for the fall semester and 26 for yearlong programs, as opposed to last year when the numbers were 154 and 22, respectively.
“I haven’t done any research on this but, anecdotally, I think [the decrease is] due to several things: students deciding at the last minute not to attend, or to postpone their semester abroad for a later date, world events, such as the conflict in the Middle East, and concern about safety and health, missed deadlines, obligations on campus, like getting into a major, and others,” said Director of International Studies Carolyn Sorkin.
The higher matriculation of accepted transfer students also added to the number of students in need of housing. According to Senior Associate Dean of Admission Greg Pyke, the Office of Admission aims to enroll 60 transfer students each year.
“This year, admitting the number we thought would give us 60, we actually enrolled 71 students,” Pyke said. “The yield just went up.”
Last year there were 64 transfers and in 2004 there were 57.