Klaus: Survey to help decide potential dorm reallocation

The University has no specific plans to make additional upperclass dormitories part of the four-year residential college system, representatives of the Housing Department said in an interview Wednesday.

There has been “no predetermined decision that any or a certain quantity [of upperclass dorms] are going to be reassigned,” Assistant Vice President for Facilities Chad Klaus explained.

The department plans to send undergraduates a survey on Friday to evaluate student opinion on potential additions to the college system and overall housing preferences.

The survey allows students to rank their preferences for adding parts of upperclass dormitories to the four-year colleges in the event that “demand for upperclass spaces in residential colleges next year exceeds planned supply,” according to the text of the survey.

Proposed additions to the college system listed in the survey include parts of Scully, Cuyler or Patton-Wright halls to Butler College; parts of Little, Lockhart or Foulke halls to Mathey College; and parts of Spelman, Cuyler, Patton-Wright or Pyne halls to Whitman College.

Klaus said that these dorms were not selected based on their room configurations, how recently they were renovated or their popularity during room draw, but rather by their proximity to residential colleges.

In the event that additional upperclass housing is incorporated into four-year residential colleges, the current requirement that all students in residential colleges buy a University meal plan will not be changed.

“I think the requirement for being in a residential college and having a University meal plan would stay,” said Matt Kinsey ’98, associate director for planning and administration in Executive Vice President Mark Burstein’s office.

The survey asks students which factors are important in “determining a positive housing experience.” Choices include room size and location, proximity to kitchens and study spaces, and the age of the building. Additionally, students are asked to state the value, to them, of living in a newly constructed or ecologically friendly dorm.

Klaus noted that the University will not be able to accommodate every student within the college system if demand increases significantly.

“Clearly we rely upon the clubs to feed a significant portion of our upperclass students,” Klaus said. “Even if we wanted to house and feed all of our upperclass students, we don’t have the capacity or the desire, at the moment, to go in that direction.”

“If, in fact, there’s more demand for the four-year college system than the permanent allocation allows for,” Klaus said, then the survey will help determine “where, proximally, [we will] think about expanding and what … students think about those options.”

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The survey results will be “confidential, but they will not be anonymous,” Director of Housing Andrew Kane said, explaining that responses will be tracked and analyzed based on categories including class year, current residential college affiliation and current type of housing.

Previous reallocation

Last year’s decision to add Spelman Halls 7 and 8 to Whitman College was met with resistance from the student body and the USG. Ultimately, only Spelman 8 was added to the four-year college. The University also assigned an additional part of Little Hall to Mathey College after reversing a decision that would have made Wright Hall part of Whitman.

The decision to add dormitory space to Whitman less than a year after its completion, Klaus said, resulted because the 2007-08 academic year saw a “suppressed sophomore class size” along with significant numbers of juniors and seniors in the college.

This allowed Whitman to house 200 juniors and seniors in its first year, but there was insufficient space to retain the members of the junior class who expressed interest in remaining in the college while also housing a sizeable number of freshmen and sophomores.

“A lot of those [juniors] ... at least as manifested in their housing applications, were interested in continuing into the four-year college program. So that’s what made it look [like] ... the reduced number of beds in the four-year college program was something we had to respond to,” Kane said.

“To maintain the number of ... slots in the four-year college system ... we had to gain a little bit of space somewhere in the system,” Klaus said, referring to the addition of Spelman 8 to Whitman.

“[We] fully understand and realize that the allocation was not a popular one,” Klaus added. Because of the student reaction to the first reallocation, the Housing Department aims to use the new survey to better gauge demand for residential college housing, he said.

“We will not replicate the same issue as Butler comes online because it already has a freshman and sophomore class,” Klaus added, “so it has its own natural rising sophomore class this coming year.”

USG president Josh Weinstein ’09 said that he does not believe demand for residential college housing is increasing.

“Since all it takes is checking a box on a form ... people just click all the boxes and hope for the best,” he said. “If they happen to get the first draw on the residential college pool, then they take the shared meal plan.”

If they don’t get a desirable draw time in a residential college draw, those students then select a room in the upperclass draw, he added.