Thirty students have been assigned to triple-student dorms this fall, despite Residence Life and Student Housing’s reassurance that this wouldn’t happen.
This summer, RLSH representatives said they anticipated triple-student dorms would not be necessary, despite an estimated 6.4 percent increase in the size of the freshman class over last year.
However, RLSH fitted 90 rooms with extra beds and desks, said RLSH Director Patrick Call. The extra bed and desk have been removed from the 60 rooms where they weren’t needed.
Bobby Childers, RLSH public affairs representative, said in mid-July that he didn’t think triple rooms would be necessary, but if they were, students would be notified of the switch before they moved in.
Edward Fisher, a freshman assigned to a triple room, said he didn’t know of his living situation until the day he moved in.
“I actually didn’t know until I picked my keys up, walked into my room and saw three beds,” Fisher said.
Call said RLSH didn’t know until early August that triple rooms would be needed, which is why students weren’t notified.
Nearly everyone living in triple rooms will be placed in a double room by the end of the first week of school, he said. They will be moved into the vacated rooms of students who registered for dorms but never showed up.
Call said the number of available rooms is still being determined.
“By the end of the week, we will take the person who turned in their residency application the earliest and place them in a permanent space, and the other two will continue living together,” he said.
As students are placed in their rooms, RLSH will move furniture with them, Call said.
Call said the triple-room backup plan wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, but this is the first year RLSH has had to resort to it.
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“It’s been about 10 or 12 years that we’ve been doing this triple plan,” he said.
Fisher said that he’s not very upset by his living situation.
“It’s not too bad; it could’ve been a whole lot worse,” he said. “My roommates are very understanding, and they’re not hard to live with.”
Even though Fisher doesn’t have a lot of space, he said that living in a triple room has positively affected his living experience on campus.
“I got to meet two new people and have become pretty good friends,” he said. “We’re already planning on going to concerts and stuff.”
Call said the University will consider making a new plan for housing in case this situation persists in the future.
“Over the course of the year, we’re going to sit down and look at what else we could do if the increase in students continues and what the campus thinks,” he said.
