In colleges across the nation, freshman students are finding themselves homesick.
For some, it is because they have just left the familiar environment of their homes.
For others, it is for an entirely different reason — their colleges have no space to house them. In the wake of rising application and enrollment rates at universities across the country, many college officials are scrambling to locate dormitory space for students requesting on-campus housing.
To accommodate large numbers of students seeking residences amidst the campus greenery, Ivy League institutions such as Princeton and Dartmouth Col-lege — and larger state schools such as the University of Georgia — have explored varied options such as converting common spaces to dorm rooms, constructing temporary on-campus housing and even building additional residence halls.
At Princeton — where about 96 percent of upperclassmen choose to live on campus, although only freshmen and sophomores are required to do so — all undergraduates who requested housing for this year were granted campus addresses, said undergraduate housing coordinator Adam Rockman.
"A very important part of the Princeton experience is living in the dorms," he remarked.
This year, the University's housing situation, particularly in the five residential colleges, remains "very tight," Rockman said. One thousand one hundred eighty-five students matriculated in the Class of 2005 — 20 more than the normal class size of 1,165.
"There are few or no open beds in the residential colleges," Rockman noted. He added that this situation likely will translate to full upperclass housing in two years when current freshmen leave the colleges. "We're packing them in," he said.
While the crowded housing situation does not so far appear to hamper dorm services such as telephone and Internet, it does pose a problem for students who may request alternate rooming assignments.
"[Many] students could not change their rooms if they wanted to," Rockman said.
In addition, some rooms on campus — Rockman estimates the number to be four — have been made to accommodate more students than usual, such as singles being used as doubles, or doubles as triples.
Before adjusting room configurations, the University took "into careful account the size and layout of the room," Rockman said. "We don't want to put students in uncomfortable situations or spaces."
The housing woes at the University — which has sought to improve dorm living through extensive renovations to on-campus residence halls, and plans to build a sixth residential college to accommodate a larger undergraduate enrollment — is far from unique.
"Most colleges and universities are increasing the size of their student body, whether through a specific program [such as the University's acceptance of the Wythes Committee's proposed 500-undergraduate student increase] or just more students applying and being accepted," Rockman said.
"I think [trouble with finding sufficient on-campus housing] is probably a national trend," he added.
At Dartmouth, 80 more students matriculated this year than expected, obliging the administration to consider other options for housing its students.
Freshmen, who are required to live on campus, were granted first priority in dorm assignments. Then the deans considered upperclassmen. Eighty-five percent of upperclassmen requested on-campus housing this year, exceeding the number of rooms available.
"We realized that even if we converted lounges and studies to bedrooms there would not be [sufficient housing]," Dartmouth's director of housing Lynn Rosenblum said last week.
So in order to alleviate its housing shortage, Dartmouth offered a number of incoming freshmen free housing for the 2002-03 school year if the students deferred a year.
In early July, Dartmouth also purchased six two-story, colonial-style modular homes, each designed to accommodate 14 students in seven doubles. The town of Hanover approved these temporary houses — four of which are now situated on campus near the college's other residence halls — for only three years.
Each home is equipped with phone lines, cable television lines and Internet connections. And according to Rosenblum, the temporary homes equally as comfortable as existing on-campus dorms.
Recognizing that the current housing shortage likely will persist in future years, Dartmouth is turning to more permanent solutions: It is planning to build additional residence halls.
"It's difficult to find off-campus housing because there are no hotels or apartment complexes surrounding the Dartmouth campus," Rosenblum said. "We're hoping to break ground [on additional housing] this year."
Princeton, too, has looked into the creation of additional on-campus rooms. Like Dartmouth, University administrators have bypassed the conversion of common living and study spaces into more dorm rooms and instead have turned to blueprints for new undergraduate living facilities.
"We don't assume there will ever be a time when we have a ton of extra rooms," Rockman said, explaining that many juniors and seniors choose to live on campus because of prohibitively expensive rental rates in the immediate University vicinity and better living services on-campus, such as Dormnet and kitchens.
"The major benefit to living on campus is that it's less expensive and better maintained," he continued. "It's much easier for students to have their needs met on campus than off campus."
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