The process of obtaining preferred housing is a complex—and at times, emotional—one, as students fight for the senior houses, two-room doubles, and high rises available on campus. For sophomores and juniors who choose to study abroad, finding appropriate housing can be even more difficult and emotionally charged and usually means forgoing preferred housing, leading to an “I’ll take what I can get” attitude. For others, housing upon return from abroad involves conversations with friends and strangers alike, in attempts to squeeze into an open spot. As housing selection takes place on campus, and first-years, sophomores, and juniors find out where they’ll be living next semester, students studying abroad in the fall and the spring are doing their best to find spaces to live.

According to Director of the Office of Residential Life (ResLife) Fran Koerting, ResLife does its best year by year to ensure students get appropriate housing. This becomes complicated with regard to the fluctuations of students who go abroad each semester, given that historically, more students go abroad in the fall than in the spring. Inevitably, this causes strain on campus housing.

“For each of the past five years, there have been more students studying abroad in the fall than in the spring,” Koerting explained in an email to The Argus. “Since the spaces we use for students returning from abroad are those vacated by those who will be away in the spring semester, that gives us very little flexibility. In addition, there tend to be more sophomores studying abroad in the spring semester, meaning we sometimes have to place juniors returning from abroad in sophomore appropriate spaces.”

This problem most egregiously manifested itself in the springs of 2015 and 2016, according to Koerting, but has since been less pronounced. Within those years, many juniors found themselves in less-than-desirable living situations. The Argus reported on the issue in February 2015.

“On Jan. 11, students who spent the fall semester off-campus (mostly juniors, as well as some sophomores and seniors) opened their student portfolios to receive their housing assignments,” the article reads. “Though some lucky students received typical housing for their class years, they were few and far between. The majority of the returning upperclassmen were relegated to graduate apartments, off-campus houses, and dorm rooms traditionally given to underclassmen.”

In 2015, 64 more students were returning from studying abroad in the fall than students leaving for the spring—a discrepancy that ResLife was not equipped to handle. Since then, the difference in numbers, while still tangible, has been less pronounced.

Even so, students going abroad still have trouble finding a place to live. Melisa Olgun ’20, who is going abroad in the fall, acknowledged some of these challenges.

“It’s been pretty difficult,” Olgun noted. “I had a group of three friends who I wanted to live with, but because at first I couldn’t find someone to switch with, it screwed us all over. They couldn’t live together because they didn’t know a fourth person to bring in, and I didn’t know where I would go.”

Whether housing is available or not, some students’ difficulties simply come down to figuring out who they can live with. For students who hope to switch in with a friend who will go abroad in the spring, the situation depends entirely on whether the friend does end up going abroad; if the friend decides to stay, there’s nothing that can be done.

“I had been planning on moving into a friend’s high-rise because her roommate was planning on going abroad in the spring,” said Libby Salzman-Fiske ’19. “However, her plans changed in November, so I ended up going through the general housing lottery with another friend to try to get our own high-rise together. It was definitely quite stressful. I was living in a place with very little Internet service at the time, and trying to stay on top of the emails from ResLife, and the various Google Doc forms left me feeling unsure of what my situation would be in the spring.”

Olgun also addressed the uncertainty of switching into someone else’s spot.

“I feel like this whole ‘switching out’ process is stressful and so uncertain,” Olgun acknowledged. “I get the reason behind it, but on campus, I only really need to worry about making a group and praying for a good ranking. This time around, my name isn’t even in the system, so I’m essentially relying on my group to make sure I have a space. I essentially have no control over the selection process, so I feel pretty useless.”

In some cases, finding housing can also be difficult for students who are abroad in the spring and are looking for places to return to in the fall. This was the case for Abhishek Prabhu ’20, who is currently abroad in London.

“[Finding housing] was quite cumbersome, to be honest,” Prabhu admitted. “The main reason why it was difficult was that I wasn’t on campus and so there weren’t people around me talking about housing selection for the fall and I had no clue where or who I was going to live with. To be fair, I did get e-mails from ResLife, but those were only regarding meeting their deadlines. I also couldn’t ask my different groups of friends face-to-face if we could house together which could’ve made things much simpler, instead of me jumping around on different group chats and checking how many people were still looking for housing. I also didn’t have the option of going to an info session.”

University President Michael Roth ’78 noted that though more students go abroad in the fall than in the spring, there is still plenty of housing for students when they return.

“I think that there’s still more housing choices than there are students in the spring—I am sure of that—and so I think the question is really, do you get exactly what you want,” Roth said. “We’re confident that there will be enough housing in the spring when people come back. In the last few years, there’s been no increase in the number of students who are given permission to live off campus in the spring, because we have no housing or something.”

According to Koerting, students who worry about housing may want to consider going abroad in the spring, rather than fall.

“Studying abroad in the spring semester is best for those who are concerned about its impact on their housing,” she explained. “They are able to select their housing for the fall semester, and while abroad in the spring, are able to select their housing for the following year.”

This year, multiple students coordinated about housing via Facebook, on the Wesleyan Admission page of WesAdmits 2020. Olgun explained that without using Facebook, she likely would have been much worse off for the spring semester.

“Originally, I was going to switch with a friend in a program house, but during spring break, I was lucky enough to find a senior who is graduating in December,” she explained. “I’ll be switching with her, and will be joining my friends in the spring. If it wasn’t for that one Facebook post, it would have been absolutely impossible to find housing.”

The reigning advice from students who found housing? Plan early.

“My suggestion for people thinking of studying abroad: Before you leave for abroad and even if you think it’s too early, have at least one group—two or three is great—with whom you have discussed the nuances of housing with,” Prabhu recommended.

 

Emmy Hughes can be reached at ebhughes@wesleyan.edu and on Twitter @spacelover20.