Lounge lizards

Communication problems muddle housing

The problem of dorm overpopulation causes student agitation and decreases the quality of living. The effect is intensified by the persistence of the problem, which arose this year for the third consecutive September and threatens to distinguish itself as an annual occurrence.

The most convenient target of blame for this problem falls on housing officials who are responsible for providing students with adequate living conditions. However, admissions officials shoulder a great deal of the responsibility. In each of the past three years, the number of students admitted to the University exceeded the amount of housing space available. As a result, much of the residence hall population resides in cramped conditions. To counteract the problem, the two branches must work together to uncover viable solutions - if the housing authority states that the University has living space available to a certain number of students, admissions should not ignore that fact and proceed to invite a total that exceeds the amount of physical space.

Every year, admissions elects to invite more students than they expect will accept - and during the last three years more students have accepted those invitations than officials assumed. As a result, students suffer in the overcrowding crisis. Clearly, the admissions office must re-examine its statistics and recognize that something is amiss if the numbers have failed for several consecutive years. Either the practice of estimating the number of fall attendees must be adjusted, or the University must admit overflow students on the wait-list, admitting them only when housing becomes available.

Two to four weeks after the beginning of classes, the housing office has generally settled the situation. However, spending the first two weeks to a month of school is unsettling and stressful to first-year students, who are trying to cope with the novelty of the University atmosphere and succeed academically. Disrupting these students' lives for their first several weeks of college may take a toll on their success and happiness both socially and academically.

Residence hall living at the University does not come cheap. Over the course of the school year, many students will protest the quality of the accommodations the University is obligated to provide based on the money that students pay. Almost all parties involved can agree that providing safe, comfortable living is the University's job. Whether or not the administration currently provides adequate housing is the next question. To ensure that first-year students do receive adequate housing, the University must immediately take steps to rectify the communications gap that exists between housing and the admissions office.

09-04-97