Listen to the interview with Lucinda Coveney
Sophomores this year are the first class at Miami University required to live on campus during their second year at Miami, and the Office of Student Housing and Meal Plan Services was required to make quite a few adjustments to accommodate the larger number of people.
"So far, it's just like being at camp," said junior Robert Pfister.
The transfer student from the College of DuPage is living in a "barracks-style" room in Havighurst Hall's basement and has a towel draped over his bed for privacy and to block the ceiling light at night.
He said Miami has promised to find him a room, but he doesn't know when that will happen. In the meantime, he worries about the security of his belongings since the entire floor can access the modified study lounge through the adjacent restroom.
Pfister estimated that 35 men live in the two large rooms and nearby study lounge on the same floor.
Lucinda Coveney, director of housing contracts and meal plans, said two of these large rooms in Havighurst are being used to temporarily house students, as well as one large room in Hepburn, and that students are moved out as soon as openings are available in permanent rooms.
"That number gets smaller every day," Coveney said. "This is the time of year we really start hearing about students who aren't coming back."
Besides housing large groups in community rooms, some resident assistants (RAs) are providing temporary housing for another student if their room is large enough.
"It is something new this year," Coveney said. "We asked for volunteers and we did compensate the RAs in order to take a roommate in on a temporary basis."
Coveney said administrators from various offices across campus planned carefully for the second-year requirement using historical records and educated predictions.
"It's not an exact science so many things changed," Coveney said.
Coveney added that students placed in these large rooms and in rooms with RAs did not include first-year students. She said they are instead transfer or regional campus relocation students who signed their contracts later in the summer and could have lived off campus.
"Many of them are students that are not required to live with us," Coveney said. "Most of them could take an exemption and live off campus if they wanted to."
Sophomore Jasmine Parks heard that large numbers of students were being housed in common areas turned into living spaces and said she would not have been happy if she were placed in that situation.
"I would probably switch to another school," Parks said. "I wouldn't want to do that even temporarily."
Parks had originally requested a double room as a single, but the university was unable to accommodate the request because of the need to house the entire sophomore class. She was assigned to a friendship corridor in Hepburn with a random roommate.
She instead opted to live in a single in Heritage Commons. Though she is living with seniors in her apartment, Parks said she thinks she will enjoy the year.
"It doesn't bother me because I can adapt to my surroundings, but I do miss my same group of friends being around," Parks said.
Because of the large number of students moved around during the housing process, Coveney said everything would be reviewed before room selection begins again.
"We're going to need to sit down and re-calculate the formula," Coveney said about figuring out how many juniors and seniors can be accommodated on-campus.
Some juniors and seniors chose to live on campus, but they were cut off and added to a waiting list after January 2009.
Coveney said one of the reasons these students were not accommodated was because the second-year retention was higher than it has been in past years. She also added the university had fewer exemptions than expected, including the fraternity exemption.
"We wanted to know how many fraternity men the Cliff Alexander Office thought would be exempted and be living in the fraternity houses," Coveney said. "They gave us a specific number and that's what we plugged into our formula but it turned out to be different by about 80 young men."
She said these 80 contracts the university did not expect, as well as contracts of other students whom the university thought would be exempt, forced the university to turn other spaces like study lounges into living areas as well.
Despite the larger number of students living on-campus, Coveney said housing did work hard to place all sophomores with roommates they had requested.
"We matched every single roommate pair," Coveney said.
Coveney added that there currently is a long-range housing plan in place involving the building of new residence halls and the renovations of others. She said these plans are still in the works, so the university is not sure which buildings will be affected first.
