RPS doesn’t care about lounge people

In the upcoming weeks, all you freshmen living in the IU residence halls will begin to see a few posters about re-signing with RPS to live in them again next year. You’ll probably even receive an e-mail or two.

Let me tell you all a secret: RPS does not care where you live next year.

You’d actually be doing RPS a small favor if you move out. I became a resident assistant in fall 2006, and we had students living barracks-style in lounges because of overcrowding. The freshman enrollment that year was 8,126.

Instead of looking into alternative housing options or easing the residence hall requirements, RPS paid the problem lip service. The next year, freshmen enrollment was 8,051. There were still people living in lounges.

Not all of those freshmen lived in the residence halls, of course. Anyone over the age of 19 could live in a campus apartment. People who lived within 25 miles of Bloomington could live at home and commute. But there were still enough people living on campus that some of them had to be crammed into lounges. The charge to residents for this wall-to-wall inconvenience? Eighty percent of the rate of a double room.

This year, freshmen enrollment dipped below 8,000 for the first time since 2005. If enrollment numbers stay like this, there just might be enough space on campus to house all those that need it.

The new 803-bed Ashton center that’s currently under construction on 10th Street has the ability to alleviate these housing woes.

Well, maybe.

The overall plan for the residence halls calls for the future renovation of Forest and Briscoe into suite-style rooms, which will halve their combined capacities from 2,080 to about 1,200.

This means that IU will gain the capacity to house 800 more students in Ashton only to lose roughly the same amount from Forest and Briscoe. The total number of students that can live on campus will remain the same, but the rooms will be nicer. That way, RPS can squeeze more money out of the same number of people.

All of these methods do nothing to fix the underlying problems. It wouldn’t be rational to greatly reduce freshman enrollment. After all, we are a university. It also wouldn’t be wise to permanently change floor lounges into student rooms. Floors need a central gathering space.

I propose that RPS eases off the residency requirement for incoming freshmen. If someone wants to live in an apartment during their first year, let them. I would bet that most incoming freshmen would want to live in the dorms so they can get used to college life without having to stress over landlords and bills.

So to all you freshmen out there, no one will mind if you decide to move into a house or apartment, nor will they take offense if you sign on for another year in the dorm of your choice.

Whether or not you live on campus, RPS will still have crippling problems with overcrowding.