Miami Student

Issue date: 8/24/07 Section: Campus

Sophomores Eric Hinkle and Matt Diamond move into their residence hall Saturday.

Starting with next year's entering first-year class, a new sophomore on-campus living requirement will mean all second year students will be required to reside on campus during their second year of classes.

According to Andrew Beckett, assistant dean of students, the first class it will impact is the class entering fall 2008, meaning the policy will not actually go into effect until fall 2009.

The proposal, which will require sophomores to live on campus, was developed by a long-range housing committee who examined the housing needs of students.

"It varies a bit, but there are roughly 7,200 to 7,300 spaces available," Beckett said. "We believe that Miami will have enough spaces to handle all of the students. It depends on how fraternities will or will not be exempted from the requirement."

At this stage in the planning, first-year fraternity members could be exempt from the sophomore living requirement.

"The fraternity exemptions are really driving the process," Beckett said. "A similar process to the housing lottery will be used (to assign housing this year). A committee is working out the issues right now."

Beckett explained that the first-year housing lottery that usually occurs early in the fall semester might be pushed back to a later date in 2008 depending on the committee's recommendations, in order to allow first-year students more time to choose where they will live during their sophomore year.

"That is a lot of pressure on an 18-year-old student after only being at Miami for four or five weeks," Beckett said. "The timeline will be changed-housing and dining has tried to have the same timeline as the landlords, but we will no longer need to compete with them for sophomores."

According to Beckett, two-thirds of sophomore students already live on campus.

"When push comes to shove, it will not be a huge number of students affected," he said.

April Consolo, a sophomore student who lives off-campus in Oxford Commons, agrees with Beckett's statement that the number of people who will be affected by the resolution is relatively small.

"If it affected me, it would make me mad," Consolo said. "But most sophomores live on campus, so it won't affect many people. Basically everyone I know who's a sophomore lives on campus."

Continued...

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