Only a handful of students have responded to a College-offered incentive plan to get more students to take Fall term off, leaving more than 100 students still without Fall term housing.
Dean of the Faculty James Wright sent out a letter early last week saying any student enrolled for the fall or still on the wait list who agrees to change their Dartmouth plan to be off in the fall will receive half off their room rent for the next term they are on.
These students will also receive a higher room priority numbers the next term they are on campus and will have the highest priority within their group for course selections.
But as of 3 p.m. yesterday, only 16 people have officially agreed to the terms of the deal, Housing Assignment Administrator Lynn Rosenblum said.
The official deadline was yesterday, but Rosenblum said the College might be lenient about the deadline.
"I expect we'll get some more, but there is no way for us to predict," Rosenblum said. "It's not looking like we're going to get one hundred and fifty, which is what we need."
Wright said he did not expect the College's incentives to clear the wait list, but to shorten it.
"Realistically we never assumed that these options would resolve the problem," he said in an electronic mail message. "We hoped they would provide some relief."
Rosenblum said the College is looking into every available option to house people who are going to come to Hanover in the fall expecting housing.
"We're still looking at everything, and we're hoping that something will work for us but we really can't say anything that we're absolutely doing right now," she said. "We're trying everything we can reasonably look at, but there is no one big solution."
But she said she does not know how the College is going to house everyone.
"I just don't know," she said. "We'll be able to help some people, but in terms of getting everyone housed, I don't know how we'll do it."
Wright said he expects the wait list to get below 100 students, but said the College will not be able to get it to zero.
He said students who do not have housing should not come to campus in the fall expecting rooms.
"My own view is that students who do not have housing, or do not have assurance from residential life that they will have it, should alter their D-plans so they will not be in residence this fall," he said.
"I personally believe it would be a mistake for anyone without guaranteed housing arrangements to assume that somehow accommodations will be available and come to campus," he said.
Rosenblum said the College currently has no tangible plans to head off the housing crunch.
"We're in the let's wait and see stage," she said. "It's an ongoing thing I'm sure."
She said the College's Greek system has relieved some pressure by taking about 20 people out of residence halls and putting them in Greek houses.
Betty Pemberton, the owner of the Lake House Inn in Post Mills, Vt. said she is thinking of offering more than 20 spaces in the inn to students. She said the inn is about 20 minutes from campus.
Pemberton said she is planning to talk with College administrators to see if they can work out some sort of deal. She said students could stay at the inn for as many terms as they wanted, and could get breakfast and dinner.
Pemberton did not say what she would charge for a room but said it would be "competitive with the College but I'd be offering more."
"The neat thing about it is that it's private, its small and its very conducive to relaxation," she said.
The Enrollment Committee, a group of upper-level administrators that looks D-Plan related issues, will create a task force of administrators, faculty and students to search for long-term remedies to the problem this fall.
