Barely two weeks into the semester, AU students have found themselves in the midst of a campus-wide housing mess. Through the barrage of talk and confusion, a few points have become clear. Specifically, while this news should not have come as a huge shock to students, Housing and Dining clearly should have handled the situation better.
It was obvious from the very beginning of the academic year that on-campus housing was a serious problem. Freshmen arrived at orientation to find that 62 percent of the class of 2013 would be living in “temporary triples” for possibly the entirety of the fall semester. These 330 triples met Housing and Dining’s furniture and the residence halls’ plumbing capacity. Since AU’s retention rate, the desire for on-campus housing and enrollment for both first-year and transfer students are all growing, it was clear that the 2009-2010 housing crunch was only going to get worse in the years to come.
The transformation of Clark and Roper Halls into first-year and University College housing is not meant to help alleviate the housing crunch but to improve the quality of students’ housing experiences. The university recognizes that putting three people into a room meant for two does not create the best living environment — just as floor dynamics don’t work so well when one half of the floor is involved in University College. While a simpler short-term housing solution could be to defer the upperclassman lottery system for another year and keep triples at their maximum, the university has implemented a more responsible, long-term solution.
This plan is specifically meant to make the housing experience more enjoyable for future students. Although Housing and Dining’s plan does inconvenience current students, I think we can all recognize that the university is attempting to deal with a difficult situation and understand that they have come to perhaps the best decision in what is an extremely messy problem.
While the university’s solution to the housing problem can be understood given the circumstances, the way students received the information cannot. The Jan. 4 e-mail that Housing and Dining sent to current students was by no means the best way to inform students of the problem. With less than a month before the fall 2010 housing process began, students were left scrambling for both answers and plans. It is obvious that the university knew for months that housing for the fall would be an issue, especially since students could sense that a problem was looming. Housing and Dining simply should have contacted the student body much earlier in the academic year about potential issues.
As AU continues to grow in popularity, I sense that there is an increasing focus on making the university more desirable for incoming students. Not that this is an issue. Obviously, I think that we all want AU to become even more highly regarded on both national and international stages. However, I think that it is important for the university to keep in mind that the current students of AU also deserve its attention and respect. We, too, were once those highly desired applicants. However, the major factors that brought us here are only possible because the student body makes it so. We make this university. Just something to keep in mind, Housing and Dining.
Erin Cady is a freshman School of Public Affairs and an AU affairs columnist for The Eagle. You can reach her at edpage@theeagleonline.com.
