The Office of Residential Life opened all of the remaining reserved suites in Anderson and Wilder Towers Monday night to accommodate the nine groups of incoming juniors who had been denied housing in Thursday?s six-person lottery.
A Class of 2003 protest scheduled for Tuesday was canceled when Residential Life appeased juniors dissatisfied with their housing situation.
?A good part of the juniors will have a single to choose from,? Director of Residential Life Logan Hazen said.
However, the move by Residential Life lowered the number of available singles in next week?s lottery by 24, reducing the approximate total to 127 for Tuesday?s lottery.
Originally, the nine groups had been left out of the room selection because the reserved suites in Towers were to be held for incoming sophomores and the singles lottery.
As a consequence, some members of the Class of 2004 would have received housing preference over incoming juniors, while groups that had desired to live together be unable to.
Now, the majority of sophomores are expected to end up living in Susan B. Anthony Residence Halls.
Five of the nine released suites had previously been reserved for sophomores. The other four had been designated random-single suites.
Last Thursday, Residential Life had released 15 more suites than it originally planned for the six-person lottery. This brought the figure of 72 suites announced in last week?s Campus Times to 87. But the addition still did not satisfy demand, leaving the nine groups without desirable housing.
Administrators and dissatisfied students worked together to come to a consensus.
Dean of the College William Green said they solved the problem before there was a protest.
?I tried to address a legitimate student concern,? Green said. ?I got plenty of cooperation from Res Life.?
Sophomore Arielle Zibrak, who was to lead the protest, was satisfied with the negotiations.
?The overwhelming number of you who backed this movement to make the housing draw system fairer this year was enough to convince the administration to bargain with us,? Zibrak said in an e-mail addressed to fellow sophomores. ?It was not in their interest to have a dissatisfied student body or a messy press situation.?
Fox Rochester and the Democrat and Chronicle were scheduled to cover the protest.
Vice President and University Dean of Students Paul Burgett said, ?Change always breeds some anxiety or discontent and we have to ? work hard to analyze the problems that students bring and try to be responsive.?
The new arrangement has spurred the creation of de facto class housing ? an outcome Residential Life was hoping to avoid. Despite the Freshman Housing Implementation Committee?s recommendation and Residential Life?s efforts to have 30 percent class integration, next year?s numbers are going to be strikingly lower.
?It?s not going to be separate camps,? Hazen said. ?It?s not pure class separation. We?ll work real hard to make sure that the classes aren?t isolated.?
?I believe that what happened was a consequence of the senior and junior returns,? Green said. ?We did our best but the numbers just got the best of Res Life.?
Further exacerbating the problem is that demand for on-campus housing exceeded prior estimates.
?We have no idea what the demand will be until we count the contracts,? Burgett said. ?The demand for [the Graduate Living Center] exceeded our expectations.?
He estimated that nearly 65 to 70 percent of incoming seniors applied to live on campus next year in contrast to the normal 55 percent while incoming juniors also showed a marked increase.
?We?re experiencing more students wanting to stay on campus,? Contomanolis said. ?That?s been the trend over the past five years.?
Complicating the matter even more was sheer size of the Class of 2003. Currently, it stands at nearly 1,100 students.
?We are really feeling the pinch,? Hazen said. Housing has and will continue to be a problem for this class, he added.
The addition of the nine groups to the six-person suite lottery has put Anderson and Wilder Towers at near full capacity with the exception of some random doubles. These rooms will become available at the upperclass doubles drawing.
Incoming sophomores now account for 101 of the 502 possible spaces in Towers, mostly the result of special interest housing. This represents slightly more than 20 percent of the total students living in the two buildings.
GLC is completely full with Valentine Tower composed of all undergraduates and deKiewiet Tower containing the equivalent of six flors.
Rooms in Hill Court and SBA remain open. Hazen expects incoming seniors to select Hill Court with the remainder of the rooms to go to sophomores in SBA.
The next lottery, for single rooms, will take place Tuesday.
