Students no longer living in lounges

As fall midterms approached, junior Ronnie Baldwin was just one among more than 40 IU students still living in a residence hall lounge. Along with other loungemates, Baldwin came to resent a lack of privacy.
 
“Freshmen would just walk into the lounge, and people would beat on our door,” he said. “There was no privacy at all.”

He discovered that he would be able to get a single room in Ashton Center on the final day of school last semester. He moved into his new room on Saturday.

Like Baldwin, all IU students living in the residence hall lounges have been moved out since winter break. Residential Programs and Services had many challenges in finding the right space for students.

“Older students wanted to live in an apartment or Willkie,” said Sara Ivey-Lucas, assistant director for housing assignments. “It is awkward for a 23-year-old to share a room with an 18-year-old.”

Despite the hurdles, most of the students were moved out of the lounges by the week of fall semester midterms.

But when more than 20 foreign exchange students arrived for a second-eight-weeks intensive English program, Ivey-Lucas said RPS was “held in a balance.”

While most freshman students were moved into their regular housing space during the third week of classes, graduate and transfer students were the ones who remained roomless.

When the expansion of Ashton Residence Center is complete in 2010, RPS will have an additional 750 beds to assign, Ivey-Lucas said.

“We have to check with the admission office every year to make sure there is enough space,” she said. “Freshman residency halls are regularly a balancing act. This is the second time this has happened.”

Typically, more than 300 students leave by the end of first semester each year, opening beds for those still living in lounges. 

Compared to Big Ten counterparts who also face housing issues, IU students fare well, Ivey-Lucas said.

Schools such as Michigan, Penn State, Michigan State and Minnesota often keep their students in the lounges until the next semester if they are unable to move out within the first four weeks of school, Ivey-Lucas said.

“Having students stay in the lounges was a challenge for the rest of the community and puts extra stress on the community,” she said. “The goal was to empty them as fast as we could.”

RPS officials had to balance accommodating students still stuck in lounges and those who, for a variety of reasons, applied to change rooms.

Freshman Sai Lella moved from Briscoe Quad to Wright Quad. Following a semester of roommate trouble, she applied for a roommate change first semester, requested Wright Quad and moved into her current room before winter break began.

Lella and her friend, who could also not resolve roommate issues, currently live together.

“We requested Wright because Briscoe was too far away from everything,” Lella said. “I love my life now.”

Lella, like many other students, had her room change requests met. Five hundred students requested room changes and 234 of them were accommodated, Ivey-Lucas said.

The highest number of accommodated room request changes at the semester’s beginning were for Foster Quad and McNutt Quad, with 15 new residents moving into each of the halls. Despite the room change requests there, John Summerlot, McNutt’s residence manager, said the residence hall is traditionally the highest in demand.

“For every one room, five people want to live there,” he said.