Officials regard dorm overflow as unavoidable

This fall, 268 admitted students didn’t have a room when they moved on campus.

The problem, typically called housing overflow, occurs when there are more students than there are rooms available. And it has been a recurring issue at IU for the last several years, said Sara Ivey Lucas, assistant director of assignments for Residential Programs and Services.

“There’s not a good way to know how many of the actual students who apply are actually going to decide to come here,” Ivey Lucas said. “It’s a math problem, but there’s just no way to predict all the different probability angles on it.”

Students affected by overflow are typically placed in residence hall floor lounges. It is usually temporary, Ivey Lucas said, with as many as six students living
together in one large room.

“There is a lot of internal department pressures of making sure we have enough furniture in the right places and that it’s set up so students will be happy with it,”
she said.

Of the students who started the semester in a floor lounge this year, Ivey Lucas said all the women have been moved, and the men remaining in lounges will be there for the rest of the semester because there are no male rooms left.

Despite students still living in lounges, Ivey Lucas said this year’s overflow was not as problematic as expected, but to help alleviate this issue in future years, RPS will revise its room cancellation policy by charging students $400 to break a housing
contract late.

Other offices on campus, however, are involved in housing decisions and overflow
issues as well.

IU’s Office of Admissions and the Office of Capital Projects & Facilities also factor in.

For the past two years, Mary Ellen Anderson, director of admissions, said IU has admitted students as they applied — known as rolling admissions — to accommodate changing class sizes.

A struggling economy, Anderson said, has recently affected the Office of Admission’s procedures and deadlines, which in turn determines who lives where and what universities students attend.

“We are anxious about the economy, not really knowing who might end up actually enrolling or showing up,” Anderson said. “We are not as confident about that as we have been in previous in years.”

Regardless of when students apply, they do not initially list residence hall preferences or if they will live on campus. Once admitted, Anderson said IU immediately sends information on living options.

“I think most students who realize that if they are coming to Indiana University and they have some place that they would like to live, they really do need to get the housing application in fairly quickly,” Anderson said.

Though all freshman who live more than 25 miles away are required to live in the dorms, Anderson said a higher percentage of students transferred to IU this year, and more returning students opted for on-campus housing.

Also this year, a tower of Briscoe Quad, with about 525 beds, had to be shut down for
scheduled maintenance.

Tom Morrison, vice president for capital projects and facilities, said though renovation and construction projects are planned years, even decades, in advance, that doesn’t mean setbacks don’t happen.

Morrison compared dorm renovations to road construction, both being necessary
inconveniences.

“We understand sometimes that streets have to be rebuilt,” Morrison said. “And then all of us have to take detours, or go slower on highways. It’s an inconvenience, but we all have to go through that because it needs to be fixed.”

In the end, Anderson said many coincidences, rather than flawed communication or operation among IU’s offices, cause overflow.

“It was really almost like this perfect storm scenario,” Anderson said. “I think we have an incredible system.”