Students eligible to register for on-campus housing today

Students living in the residence halls might have just finished learning the names of their floormates, lofting their beds in the perfect position and buying those earplugs to drown out their roommate’s alarm.

But even though some students have just settled in, it is already time to start thinking about housing assignments for next year.

Today is the first day Residential Programs and Services opens up its Web site for students to renew their housing contracts and pick out their rooms. There are a total of five phases for the housing assignment process.

Currently, the process is in Phase I.

In this phase, students are only allowed to request the same room they are living in now and choose a roommate if applicable.  

“We encourage students to claim their current space,” said director of assignments, Buck Walters.

He said this will help students ensure some type of room up front, and they can always change their assignments in later phases.

These later phases allow students not only to pick the neighborhood and residence hall they want to live in, but also to choose what side of the hall they wish to be, their bathroom type preference and even which direction the windows face, said Sara Ivey-Lucas, assistant director of assignments.

This past fall, 91 percent of freshmen lived on campus, 21 percent of sophomores, 7.6 percent of juniors and 4.6 percent of seniors, Walters said.

“Overall, about 21 percent of people returned to live on campus the following fall,” he said.

Senior Chasity Kern, who lives in Willkie Quad, said she thinks living in the dorms is easier because she does not have a car to drive to campus and can use the bursar’s office to pay for her housing.

Walters and Ivey-Lucas encourage students to consider Willkie because it is often overlooked, and they said it is a nice alternative as an upperclassman dorm.

“Willkie is quiet compared to the ‘freshman’ dorms,” Kern said.  

Still, the dorm with the consistently highest retention rate is Collins Living-Learning Center.  

“Collins is always at the top of the list,” Walters said. “Thirty-six percent who lived here last spring came back to live in Collins.”

Other dorms that win the popularity contest are Ashton and Read with an almost 10 percent retention rate, Walters said. 

Walters said students should start looking at what is available to them and can call the assignments desk if they have any questions or recommendations at 855-5601.