Report: new beds needed" read the front-page headline in The Dartmouth this Monday (Sept. 25, 1995), drawing our attention to a hot news flash: After a thorough investigation by some of Hanover's leading housing experts, the Office of Residential Life had come to the conclusion that hey, there might be a housing shortage here! (Good thing this was detected early).
Sarcasm aside, however, it is painfully obvious these days that Dartmouth's dorm system is inadequate and cannot accomodate all who wish to live in dorms. Scattered, random housing arrangements are becoming more common, and the residential community spirit is fading.
Every fall in recent memory has brought housing horror stories of living in converted study lounges, renting out random fraternity rooms or turning doubles into triples. This fall, things appear to have improved, but the problems have really only been swept under the rug, not solved. Examples:
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Nobody left on the waiting list? Sounds good, until the truth comes out. Unlike in the past, changing your D-plan this year got you onto a second, "secret" waiting list (waiting to get onto the waiting list), which never seemed to be mentioned publicly. And then there were the many students who took themselves off the lists or didn't even apply because they knew the situation was hopeless.
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All on-time applicants were housed? By restricting D-plan choices, ORL and the Registrar teamed up to prevent some '98's from being on this term, and second, by giving them the worst priority numbers, ORL scared a lot of the others off campus -- many signed leases before they could even apply to ORL (how convenient). Finally, no late applications were accepted. Of course, none of these groups of students who "chose" not to apply could foul up ORL's statistics this year.
All the evidence so far indicates that ORL's and the Registrar's new system is working as planned. There actually were fewer problems at the start of fall term this year. But the problems were only dealt with, not solved, and the methods used were not exactly optimal.
Forcing '98's in their second term of college to find apartments in a town they've known for only five months; being anally strict about housing deadlines; using any means necessary to purge the housing applicant pool; and worst of all, not giving students the freedom to choose the D-plan that best suits their academic interests and needs: is this really what we want? And is it worth putting up with this annual hassle just to avoid building a new dorm, especially when there are plans for a whole new "second campus?"
Now, ORL has shown that it is very good at weeding out applicants, but ORL is a housing office, not a law school admissions board; single-minded, overzealous weeding-out should not be its main duty.
Instead of perfecting the art of reducing fall enrollment the administration should recognize the need and build another dorm. Maybe then ORL can focus on how best to provide rather than deny housing.
In the past it has been argued that a new dorm would be impractical because it would be unfilled during the winter and spring terms. But that argument is completely circular -- it is only because of the D-plan, which forces us to take one of those terms off so that we can stay in the summer, that enrollment is lower during the winter and spring. Remember, the D-plan was introduced as an attempt to house more students without adding more beds. With new dorms, we wouldn't need the D-plan if we didn't want it (though that's a whole other debate). Hence, the dorm wouldn't be empty winter and spring because we wouldn't have to take those terms off.
Dartmouth seems to be getting a disturbing cheapskate tendency lately, beginning at least with coeducation in the early '70's when class sizes were almost doubled but dorms weren't. Back then, the administration turned to a creative, quick fix (the D-plan) to avoid spending money and facing reality, and today it is doing the same with its enrollment committees and schemes.
Maybe it's time ORL and the College finally got together and accepted the reality that this is a college of 4400, not 3500. By sacrificing everything, even students' academic goals, for the bottom line, Dartmouth seems to have lost sight of its mission to educate and care for its students.
