Editor's note: This is the first in a multi-part series focusing on the future of residential life at Dartmouth.
Given his high housing number and Dartmouth's well-known housing crunch, Johann Maradey '08 expected to live with his friends "in a janitor's closet" this year had he not been chosen as an undergraduate advisor.
The housing shortage that has made Maradey and many other students nervous during room draw has its roots in academic policy changes College administrators implemented over 20 years ago.
During the early 1980s, colleges and universities across the country were scrutinizing what it took to earn a College degree. Dartmouth's graduation requirements at that point only took 11 academic terms to complete, with students taking three or four fewer courses than currently required to graduate.
In order to remain academically competitive, Dartmouth required students to take more courses to graduate, causing seniors to stay on campus for an extra term.
At the same time, the administration also made it harder for students to get credit for off-campus academic programs, including many study abroad programs through other schools. This decreased the number of students studying off campus through various programs on any given term by 250.
With seniors staying on-campus for an extra term and 250 additional students staying in Hanover each term, the College suddenly encountered serious housing issues.
By failing adequately to prepare for the policy changes, the College found itself in a housing crunch that still exists today to some extent.
"Immediately in 1985 we faced a housing crunch," Dean of Residential Life Martin Redman said.
For over 15 years, the college failed to address the housing crunch, forcing students with high housing numbers to find alternative or backup housing.
Even by 1999, the issues remained the same, with around 200 students on a waitlist for housing and 500 living off campus.
Redman explained the College's failure to house students for so long as part of former College president James Freedman's policy of focusing almost solely on academics.
"Friedman's emphasis had been academic rigor, the classroom experience. President Wright, I think because of his long standing at the institution, really wanted to balance the scales a bit," Redman said. "This academic thing is extremely important, but you have to balance it with the out of classroom experience: athletics, residential areas, social life."
President Wright hoped to address the housing crunch and a host of other issues facing the College in the late '90s as part of his controversial Student Life Initiative.
Redman described the movement that emerged from the SLI's housing initiative.
"[The idea was] we've got to fix the housing problem," he said. "We've got to build 500 beds as quickly as possible, with 600 beds coming soon," he said.
ORL began planning a new 500-bed cluster on North Main Street, but Hanover's zoning laws, as well as complaints from neighbors, forced the College to alter its building plans and shrink the planned dorms to the McLaughlin cluster's current 340 beds.
Those 500 beds would come from two new clusters of dorms, the McLaughlin Cluster on North Main Street and the Tuck Mall dorms on Tuck Drive. The Tuck Mall dorms will house the remaining 160 students for a gain of 500 beds.
Despite the inconveniences of the new construction, students still support the administration's efforts to ease the current housing crunch.
"I think [the construction] is a wonderful and necessary move on behalf of the administration," Maradey said. "Although the College almost always finds housing for those on the waiting list, I feel like the new construction will relieve a lot of stress from those on the waiting list."
