Campus housing faces squeeze
ISSUE: 05/01/07 > News > Campus housing faces squeeze
For the first time, Belmont does not have enough housing spaces for male residents, and with a larger incoming freshman class, residence halls will be pressed for space.
There are 16 male students without rooms for fall 2007.
“We know that we are going to be able to house those 16 students that are still waiting for housing. We know that…because we anticipate the number of cancellations will be greater than those 16,” said Anthony Donovan, director of residence life.
"Belmont should be our home, and if we can't feel secure in our own home, then that's a problem." Marcus Haslam |
These students are currently in a waiting queue called My Temporary Home, Donavan said. They should know their housing assignments around May 15, the cancellation deadline.
Those 16 males will be put in available spaces. Residence life will try to honor students’ original roommate requests, but that may not be possible, he said.
Residence life expected 1,170 current students, not including incoming freshmen, to apply for housing, which would have put them well under their limit. But, they got 1,230, Donovan said.
They assigned each student a draw time based on his or her credit hours. Students were to go into the online-housing selection at their specified time and choose an available room to live in for next semester. Housing selection was March 22 and 26-29.
Residence life did not give out more draw times than rooms available, Donovan said. The problem was a gender issue.
There were enough spaces for all students that needed rooms, but more of the spaces were women’s rooms. There were not enough rooms for men, Donovan said.
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Residence life monitored the housing selection process, and by the second day of the draw they thought there might be a problem, Donovan said. Housing ran out the last night of the draw.
“Men generally tend to be later in the process. They tend to wait until the last minute to do things,” he said.
“There were some guys who went through the housing process and didn’t sign up when they had a chance to use their draw times, and they decided to do it late in the last night of the draw, and there weren’t spaces available for them,” he said.
Oliver Hughes, 19, a freshman from Kansas majoring in music business, did not
See HOUSING, page 8 Ú
get a room. His room for next year is currently Room 21 on the first floor of My Temporary Home, he said. In other words, he’s on a waiting list.
His draw time was 7:25 p.m. on the last night of housing selection. He said he went into the online-housing selection as soon as he could and saw a big red notice saying Belmont ran out of housing.
At first Hughes was confused. Then he said he laughed about it. “Well, Belmont has to find me a room or I guess I’ll live outside. I did bring a tent. I have a tent here.”
Residence life did not contact him beyond the notice in BIC, he said. He emailed them, but only found out that he would know if he had a room by May 15.
Matt Clark, a 19-year-old freshman from Michigan majoring in music business, is also currently listed in My Temporary Home.
His draw time was at 7 p.m. at the end of housing selection, he said.
“I was mad. My roommate was already pretty sure he was going to transfer,” Clark said, “it was the final straw for him.”
He was surprised that an out-of-state sophomore couldn’t get a room, he said.
Having run out of rooms for males, space for incoming freshmen will be tight. All of Wright will have three girls to a room to make space.
Residence life thinks there is enough space to house the freshmen for next year, but the university is still accepting students, Donovan said.
If there ends up not being enough housing for freshmen, the university may ask students who live locally to stay at home and may offer exemptions to sophomores to allow them to live off campus, said Donovan.
“We have not forced students to move off campus at this point. I believe that would be one of the last options that we would consider for this year,” he said.
Some students fear that this will happen. Marcus Haslam, 18, a freshman entrepreneurship major, is one of these students.
“What’s going to happen to us? Are they just going to kick us out so the freshmen have room?” he said.
The situation has made him frustrated with the administration, he said. “Belmont should be our home, and if we can’t feel secure in our own home, then that’s a problem.”
Although housing is tight, there are no immediate plans for building more housing, Donovan said.
Belmont has already added more housing in the past few years to provide for the school’s growth including Kennedy, Thrailkill and the second phase of the Hillside.
There are a total of 2,060 housing spaces for both freshmen and upperclassmen for the fall 2007 school year.
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