RPS expects to house more than 100 students in residence hall lounges

An estimated 100 students will live in residence hall lounges at the beginning of the 2008-09 school year, said Residential Programs and Services Executive Director Patrick Connor.

“We won’t be able to tell how many students will be living in lounges until the check-in date,” Connor said.

This will be the third time in the last nine years RPS has had to temporarily place students in residence hall lounges, Connor said. The situation is the result of continual cancellations and requests from students for RPS housing, and some of the largest freshman classes IU has ever seen. With no way of knowing how many students will need temporary housing, RPS plans to set up more than enough lounge space for students to live in, Connor said.

RPS is prepared to house up to 250 students in residence hall lounges, said Residential Operations Director Bob Weith.

“That doesn’t mean we will have 250 people living in lounges, but it’s smart for us to put up more than we need,” Weith said.

RPS plans to house four students to a lounge because that roughly matches the square footage each student has in a double room, Connor said. Lounges will be furnished like a dorm room, and locks will be changed for the security purposes of those living in the lounges.

RPS planned to send e-mails this week to students who have not been assigned a room informing them they could be temporarily placed in a lounge, Connor said.
The number of students placed in lounges will depend on several variables, Connor said. In the past, anywhere from 50 to 75 students who had a housing contract with RPS didn’t show up to check in and didn’t call. RPS then called them, Connor said, usually to discover students had found off-campus housing, were no longer attending IU or had other reasons why they no longer needed RPS housing. Connor said he expects a lot of shuffling to occur in the next few weeks leading up to Sept. 2 – the first day of classes.

“Every day we get cancellation notices,” Connor said. “We’re still getting requests from students who decided they want to live in on-campus housing.”

This situation is connected largely to increased enrollment, Weith said. This is the third year in a row IU has seen large freshman classes. The fall 2006 freshman class was the largest on record at that point, Connor said. The freshman class that came in fall 2007 was slightly smaller, but this year’s freshman class is expected to be the largest, Connor said.

RPS had to temporarily place about 70 students in residence hall lounges in 2006 and about 100 in 2001, Connor said. In both instances, RPS was able to get students into a regular living space within the first month, Connor said.

The length of time students will have to stay in residence hall lounges will vary, Weith said. Some students who arrive Aug. 27 will probably be placed in regular housing the same week. Others may have to wait several weeks.

“It just depends on how many spaces we have and who doesn’t show up,” Weith said. “It’s impossible for us to predict.”