As move-in day approaches, many students prepare to live in a small room with a roommate or two in a residence hall.
However, due to overcrowding of residence halls, some students must move into a floor lounge temporarily.
Last year, Residential Programs and Services housed around 180 students in lounges. After changing the contract renewal process and reassessing room occupancies, RPS lowered that number to around 15 students this year.
“All the efforts that we’ve done over the last year have really benefitted us to be in the spot that we’re in right now,” said Kelly Thacker, assistant director for housing assignments.
RPS opened the application earlier in the year and set earlier deadlines for housing renewal contracts. This gave RPS a better sense of which returning students needed housing, Thacker said.
“This helped us better manage our bed space,” Thacker said.
All students who were assigned to lounges this year signed housing contracts after July 15.
When looking at room occupancies, Thacker worked with Maggie Talmage, assistant director of facilities at RPS, to determine which rooms could hold another bed. Large single rooms became doubles and large double rooms became triples.
“We wanted to allow for more students to be placed in a permanent room from the very start,” Thacker said.
Talmage and Thacker also worked together to better furnish the lounge spaces. They purchased new furniture or took furniture from lounges in residence halls under construction. These temporary living spaces now include couches, coffee tables, beds and bookshelves.
“Even if it’s temporary, it still needs to be comfortable for them to live in,” Thacker said.
RPS is working to do this by making the lounge spaces mimic student rooms as closely as possible.
“We want our students in our buildings to feel as safe and equal as everyone else,” Talmage said.
Once RPS finds housing for these students, they will move into that new room.
Thacker said they look at building or neighborhood preferences of these students, but finding them a place in that area can be difficult.
“Our priority is to get them into a permanent room space, not necessarily into the neighborhood of their choice,” Thacker said.
Thacker said she wants students to stay housed on campus because students who live on campus longer tend to be more academically successful.
However, it can be hard to house many returning students because all first-year students are required to live on campus.
“It really is a balancing act,” Thacker said. “You have to have a strategy, but you have to be flexible to adjust that on a day-to-day basis.”
All of the work that went in to lowering the number of students in lounges was a team effort, Thacker said.
“I certainly could not have done this alone,” Thacker said.
