For the first time in the College's modern history, it is becoming increasingly likely that not all enrolled students will be given Spring term housing this year.
Currently, the Office of Residential Life will not be able to accommodate 26 enrolled students on-campus for the Spring term, Director of Housing Services Lynn Rosenblum said. She noted, however, that ORL has made progress in whittling the waiting list down from its peak of over 100 students.
"It's going to depend now on students who have housing for the spring, and if they've decided not to be here and change their D-Plan," she said.
According to Rosenblum, the vacating of spaces by students who already have housing for the spring "is the only way at this point for spaces to become available." She said she monitors changes in student D-Plans on a daily basis to check for possible openings.
Room assignments for Spring term will be issued Feb. 29, and Rosenblum said she expects that once the notices go out a few students may cancel their housing which will create space for wait-listed students.
According to Rosenblum, ORL's inability to meet demand for on-campus housing for enrolled students has not happened since the fall of 1994. In such cases, eligibility for the wait list requires a student be enrolled for classes.
Rosenblum said ORL was still housing students into the second week of the term last year, but those were students who missed the deadline.
"I don't know if we will be able to accommodate the late applicants this year," she said. "We'll be lucky if we get the rest of the wait list taken care of."
In order to make more room, approximately eight leave-term students were denied housing at their fraternity or sorority. Delta Delta Delta and Epsilon Kappa Theta sororities and Alpha Chi Alpha fraternity along with Amarna, an undergraduate society, were among those affected.
The only way these organizations could approve leave-term residents would be to compress rooms by converting singles into doubles.
As for the fall, the traditional time for long wait lists, Rosenblum said she always anticipates a housing crunch although it is currently difficult to judge the size of the list because members of the Class of 2003 have not filed their D-Plans nor has the class size for entering freshman been determined.
