RPS sets goals to stanch residence hall overflow

IU’s Residential Programs and Services has a lot on its plate.

Renovations at Briscoe Quad began in May. Final construction stages of the Union Street Center ended days before the fall semester. Plans for a new residence hall will go into effect in the next few years.

And through all of the construction, Assistant Director of Assignments for RPS Sara Ivey Lucas and her team have to deal with student placements.

“What we’re looking at for the 2011-12 academic year, and maybe the next two to five years after that, is being in a similar tight housing situation,” Ivey Lucas said.
At the beginning of the 2010 fall semester, 268 students who chose on-campus housing did not have a place to stay.

Following the Briscoe renovations, the complex will have 180 fewer bed spaces. With the continuing goal of admitting 7,200 to 7,300 freshmen next year, the overflow problem will not end soon.

So, how does RPS help deal with this issue?

Overflow causes
For the past two years, some overflow issues have been a result of rolling admissions, where IU admits students as they apply to accommodate changing class sizes. When applying, students do not initially list their housing preferences but instead receive information on options after they have been admitted.

IU has also seen a higher percentage of students choosing to return to on-campus housing in recent years, along with the required freshmen who live more than 25 miles away from campus.

A final cause is the Briscoe construction, which closed off 525 beds due to scheduled maintenance.

But for now, efforts to place overflow housing students in residence hall rooms has ended for the fall semester. As of late September, all of the women living in hall lounges have moved and all the remaining men are living in the lounges for the rest of the semester. No additional male rooms were available.

New residence hall
An unnamed new residence hall is set to open in fall 2013 in the Southeast neighborhood among the Wendell W. Wright Education Building, Willkie Quad and Read Center.

Its five-year plan includes renovations to existing residence halls and the construction of three new apartment buildings. The new residence hall is being built to accommodate IU's growing number of incoming students. The entire plan is estimated to cost $140 million.

Funding for the new residence hall, along with the Briscoe renovations, will come from private philanthropy and reserve funds that were already in place. Student tuition rarely funds the projects.

The new building will house 400 to 450 people and have a similar floor layout to Teter and McNutt quads, complete with bathrooms that are single occupancy but are shared by everyone on the floor.

However, officials are still determining if the Southeast neighborhood is the ideal spot for the new building.

Future plans
In early August, Ivey Lucas and other RPS employees began to review rooms that could serve as additional bed spaces to make up for the 180 fewer Briscoe will have to offer next year. After a meeting with the Residence Halls Association General Assembly on Oct. 14, they narrowed down the possible spaces to 125.

The possibilities still include turning triple rooms in Eigenmann Hall into quadruples and having residential assistants live in single rooms instead of double-singles.

The current plan calls to have approximately 100 fewer double-singles campuswide, leaving the double-single rooms in living-learning communities intact.

Ivey Lucas said RPS will approach RHA’s Space Utilization committee with a final plan in early November and will announce the new changes by e-mail to students interested in on-campus housing between Nov. 10 and 15 before the residence hall renewal process begins Nov. 29.