Lounge Life

As another school year rolls around at IU, the annual move-in chaos and confusion into the dormitories includes another complication.\nThirty to 40 students will be spending their first days on campus living in a lounge. \nIU's largest freshman class ever left some students without a dorm room to move into Wednesday. A typical freshman class size usually numbers roughly around 6,700. This year however, that number jumped to 7,100, according to the Office of Admissions.\nThose who applied for housing late are living in makeshift rooms in Forest, Teter and Briscoe Quads until other arrangements are made. They will eventually take the places of prospective students who never showed up, said Bob Weith, director of residential operations for Residential Programs and Services, the University organization in charge of housing.\n"The students who will be assigned to lounges would all be rather late applicants," Weith said. "We're glad to identify a way to give them some place to stay even though they were late in applying."\nIn addition to late applicants, students who decide not to live in their assigned room and fail to notify RPS cause a problem.\nIn years past, anywhere from 150 to 200 students never checked-in, and the same numbers are anticipated for this semester. These students choose at the last minute to transfer universities, live off campus instead or defer college all together.\n"After (the residence hall) opening, we then get a list of the students who had signed a contract, chose not to check-in, and never notified us of their decision not to live on-campus," said RPS executive director Pat Connor.\nWhen these individuals and rooms are accounted for, those students sleeping in floor lounges can be shifted to their permanent locations.\n"We're hopeful that we'll get students integrated into regular student rooms as soon as possible once the semester is under way," Weith said.\nWhile the situation can be seen as a nuisance for the students, it also affects the community of the floor for that particular lounge. Lounges typically provide a social setting for those living on the floor. This can be especially helpful for freshmen to become better acquainted and more comfortable in their new environment.\n"It's an inconvenience for the rest of the floor, which doesn't get to use the lounge until the temporary students have moved out," Weith said. \nUp to four students can be housed in the lounges, which average 400 square feet. The lounges have air conditioning and couches.\n"The lounges are furnished and are actually a pretty nice place for students to live," Connor said. "In the past when this happened, most students didn't want to leave. We try to hurry and get them reassigned so the floor can have their lounge back, but they'd rather just stay in the lounge."\nBut all students will be moved into residence hall rooms. Students have been housed in lounges twice before within the past few years, and Connor expects that it will take about two weeks to get the students into their new rooms.\nStudents will be assigned to a lounge depending on the neighborhood they requested on their housing application. For example, someone who requested to live in the Central Neighborhood would be temporarily housed in the Teter location.