Sophomores will likely experience the frustration of yet another Fall term housing crunch next year, Office of Residential Life officials said Monday after last week's room draw statistics had been formally tallied.
"We currently have 330 '07s eligible for housing in the fall with no room assignment," said Dean of Residential Life Martin Redman. The number is comparable to past years, according to Director of Undergraduate Housing Rachael Class-Giguere.
There are currently 50 room vacancies in College housing facilities across campus for the coming year, including some in affinity housing, Redman said. If past years are any guide, nearly all vacancies will be filled by the end of Spring term.
Redman also noted that 50 sophomores per year choose to live off campus, and predicted a final waitlist of about 230 students.
ORL housing coordinators do not start making assignments from the waitlist until August, however, so the College may not find housing for the last group of wait-listed students until shortly before the start of Fall term.
Assignments are made so late because the housing office holds off on waitlist decisions to take into account as many undergraduate D-plan changes as possible and to house all first-year students, Redman said.
"By waiting, we are better able to satisfy students' requests for the type of space they are interested in," Redman said.
In August, the waitlist and room change forms are pooled together and rooms are assigned based on requests and priority number, Class-Giguere added.
But waitlisted students should not expect to be assigned to the most sought-after housing locations, ORL officials warned.
Gold Coast and Massachusetts Row dorms proved the most popular residence clusters for students who chose to squat, leaving fewer rooms for students on the waitlist. The Maxwell and Channing Cox apartments went quickly during regular room draw, followed by large singles in Topliff and the Gold Coast cluster, Class-Giguere said.
Still, she encouraged waitlisted students to keep their hopes up.
"As far as I know, we've always gotten everyone housing off the waitlist," Class-Giguere said. But she did mention a few years when lounge space was used to house a few students temporarily.
The housing situation was most dire in the fall of 2001, when a few sophomores were placed in lounges for several weeks before the Tree Houses were completed. The following year, ORL resorted to housing students in one lounge for just a few days.
The most notable difference between this year's room draw and last year's was the class composition of the students who chose to squat, Class-Giguere said. Last year, there were many more rising junior squatters than rising senior squatters, but the situation was reversed this year.
