The College's housing waitlist for Fall term has 153 students for the second time in three years, just one year after it dropped to a five-year low of 76.
The Office of Residential life mailed Fall-term room assignments on Friday. Of the students who were not assigned housing, 149 are members of the Class of 2001.
Director of Housing Services Lynn Rosenblum said the high number of students who chose to attend Dartmouth in the Class of 2002 did not significantly contribute to the housing shortage.
She said ORL held only 1,090 beds for the 1,136 current members of the incoming class -- about the same number held last year for the Class of 2001.
"Even though there are many more that have told Dartmouth that they are coming, there usually is a melt during the summer," Rosenblum said.
She said ORL is informed of an expected number of members of the incoming classes and holds about 10 to 20 more beds than the projected amount.
Rosenblum attributed the number of students on the waitlist to the large size of the Class of 2001, a drop in off-campus programs offered this fall and 59 vacancies in academic, affinity and special interest housing.
"I think that the size of the 2001 class was a little bit bigger, so there are more sophomores that are going to be here in the Fall," she said.
"If the Class of 2002 ends up being a very big class, we'll probably be able to squeeze them in for the fall, but it will make more of a difference for the fall of 1999 when they are the rising sophomore class," Rosenblum added.
She said there has also been a "very disturbing" trend during the recent years of fewer students applying to live in academic, affinity and special interest housing -- but people on the waitlist will fill those vacancies.
As of Friday, there were 26 vacancies in the Cutter/Shabazz African-American affinity house and 10 in the International house.
The Classics and Italian Studies off-campus programs alternate in two-year cycles and are not offered this fall. As a result, the number of students scheduled to spend terms away from Hanover during the Fall term lowered since last year from 250 to 209, according to Assistant Dean of the Faculty and Exchange Coordinator Peter Armstrong.
He said housing shortages have led the enrollment committee to encourage him to schedule more off-campus programs for Fall terms.
He said the College will probably offer the Italian Studies program in both 1999 and 2000 and then continue it in alternating years, so it will no longer coincide with the Classics program.
The Environmental Studies Foreign Study Program will also be scheduled for this coming Winter but will then switch to the Fall, starting in 1999.
Rosenblum said a waitlist has formed for the Fall term since the beginning of the coeducation -- but there has never been a time when everybody on the list was not accommodated.
"We generally keep in touch with waitlist students in the summer to let them know what their status is," she said. "We've had great success over the past few years in moving everyone off the list."
During the 1993 Fall term, 13 students on the waitlist, which was originally 370 students long, began the academic year living in study lounges converted to makeshift dormitory rooms.
However, 10 of the students quickly canceled their housing contracts with ORL and found places to live elsewhere. The office was able to find rooms for the remaining three students by the end of the first week of school.
In 1994, the waitlist reached 400 students, and ORL, for the first time in its history, had to write to 200 members of the Classes of 1996 and 1997 and tell them there was no way to provide them housing.
The letter included financial incentives to many of the students to change their D-plans, along with list of available rental properties, only a few of which were in Hanover.
By the start of the 1994 Fall term, only 24 students remained without housing, and those students were all eventually accommodated.
Robin DeGracia '01 said she panicked upon finding out she was on the waitlist this year, but she learned she was 29th on the list and would most likely receive a housing assignment.
"I'm just going to sit tight and wait on the waitlist," she said.
Waitlist member Michael Chen '01 said he was "disappointed, and as time went on, a lot of my friends sort of snickered at me. The reactions were almost antagonistic."
Chen said he will wait for a room, because he is "optimistic that one will open up."
Rosenblum said students who will be on leave during the Fall term need not worry about any housing shortages in the winter.
