For the first time ever, the College is experiencing a Spring term housing crunch and has been unable to house all applicants, despite already asking some leave-term students to vacate their rooms.
The housing waitlist consists of 20 students who applied by the November sixth deadline and a growing list of candidates who are submitting their applications late. As of last week, there were 30 students in the latter category.
Thirty students who will be on leave-terms next term but wished to keep their rooms have been asked to leave their rooms to accommodate students studying on campus.
Although there is typically a waitlist for the Fall term, there has never been so much demand for spring housing. Lynn Rosenblum, director of housing services and residential life, attributes the crunch to increased student enrollment.
According to Rosenblum, 3,862 students are planning to stay on campus next term. The residence halls, academic, affinity and special interest houses, coed, fraternity and sorority houses, undergraduate society houses, and off-campus apartment market are able to handle a maximum of only approximately 3,700.
For one student, Jodie Lee '00, the crunch could not have come at a worse time. Currently an undergraduate advisor in Butterfield, Lee planned to take a leave-term in the spring while keeping her UGA and programming assistant jobs. Because of the housing crunch, she will have to leave her room and give up the two jobs.
For now, she still plans to work in the environmental studies lab as a research intern on campus.
She has not yet found a place to stay. "If I don't find a place, people have offered to put me up in their rooms," Lee said.
The housing system gives priority in the waitlist to students who apply by the deadline and are studying in Hanover. Students who are taking classes but submit a late application receive a lower priority.
Traditionally, any housing spaces left over are allocated to students who want to stay on campus but are not enrolled in classes. There will be no spaces this spring.
Rosenblum expects to be able to accommodate the 20 students who applied on time through students who will leave next term but who have not yet registered their decision.
"The difficulty will be in the late applicants" for whom the problem will not be solved until the next term actually begins, Rosenblum said.
For those who do not receive dormitory housing, Rosenblum said the options are "a couple of affinity programs that may still have vacancies and coed houses. Otherwise there is nothing."
If those alternatives disappear, the Office of Residential Life will direct students to a list of rental housing in the Hanover area.
Rosenblum asks that students who are not planning to be in residence next term but who have not yet changed their D-plan, to do so as soon as possible to help the situation.
This past Fall term's residence hall shortage was one of the worst in the College's history. Students were forced to live in converted study lounges and other makeshift rooms for the beginning of the term until additional room could be made.
