Good news: More soon-to-be college students are applying to the University than ever before. Bad news: The University has no idea where to put them all.
According to the University housing department, 3,600 students can be lodged in student housing each year. Technically speaking, the housing department guarantees a room to anyone who applies before March 31. Those who apply later are placed on a waiting list, and given a room if one becomes available.
Approximately 5,000 potential freshmen applied before the deadline this year. Although not all of those who applied will end up attending the University, the math doesn’t add up. The University is going to have to find a place for up to 1,400 students to sleep next year. Some of the alternatives proposed for this overflow include putting three students in some residence hall rooms, pairing students up with Resident Assistants and even housing students in the residence hall lounges.
These ideas are a hard sell at best, and the idea of housing people in living rooms would be laughable – if not for the fact it may actually happen. Our residence halls (with the exception of the new Living Learning Center) have already garnered a reputation for being among the worst in the country. Do we expect freshmen to tolerate this full-blown affront on their comfort and well-being? Would you want to sleep in a lounge?
The University’s plan for correcting this oversight is unacceptable – largely because there is no plan. “Students who have not applied (by the March 31 deadline) and wish to live in the residence halls may still apply,” reads the UO Housing Web site. “However, they should note that they will be placed on a waiting list and only offered a residence hall space if, and when, space becomes available.”
In other words, the University doesn’t have a solution to a problem they have been complicit in creating, a problem that is going to have serious ramifications for next year’s students living in residence halls.
It has been clear for quite some time that the 2008-09 year would produce a bumper crop of incoming freshman. Knowing this, administrators should have extrapolated that it would also be a banner year for housing and planned accordingly. Changing the system so that those who apply first are assigned housing first – and guaranteeing housing not by date, but by number of available beds – would have allowed Housing to avoid making promises that it cannot keep. Squeezing too many people into the residence halls will create more problems than it will solve.