:: Running from the Thought Police ::

:: Tuesday, June 14, 2005 ::

Housing Mayhem

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in its dubious wisdom, has once again over-admitted students to this year's incoming freshman class. Normally, the overflow is handled by placing those students who were slow in filling out their residence hall applications in temporary housing, namely wherever they fit. This year, though, Housing's usual stop-gap measures are not enough; there are simply too many freshmen for the dorms to handle. As a result, the large tower of Sherman Hall, which here-to-fore was a graduate dorm, will now house some of the overflow of freshmen from the undergrad dorms. Those eighty-some graduate students and upperclassmen who had previously had contracts to live in Sherman Hall, like my gf, were sent an email this past Wednesday stating that they were all being displaced into the short tower and, to add insult to injury, the 24-hour quiet rule was being recinded for the hall. These displaced students (with more seniority, might I add) were given four options:

1. Stay in Sherman Hall and deal with clueless, loud, rowdy, and drunk freshmen all year.
2. Cancel their Housing Contract entirely, and be forced to find an apartment miles from campus (since the ones close to campus were already leased out last Fall).
3. Transfer to Daniels Hall in Urbana, which costs more.
4. Transfer to Goodwin-Green Apartments in Urbana, which costs even more than Daniels Hall, and doesn't even include the electrical bill.

As one can see, none of these options are terribly appealing. I've heard rumor that the rates for 3 and 4 will be reduced for former Sherman residents, seeing as none of this is their fault. As far as I know, this is merely a rumor, since for the two days after this email was sent out, hardly anyone at Housing had a clue as to what was going on. They still may not - nothing's been posted on the Housing website in the meanwhile.

Compounding the stupidity of the situation is that said tall tower is being remodled and the entire hall is recieving brand spanking new furniture this summer. I hope, for the sake of the university's property investment, that all the freshmen being placed in Sherman will be female. Any observant dorm resident can tell you that male freshmen can't have nice things; alcohol, testosterone, and a sudden lack of parental supervision cause an all-too-significant number of male freshmen to challenge the heights of stupidity while placing both their bodies and Housing property at risk. Admittedly, there's only so much the university can do to limit the former, but the latter is usually and intelligently prevented by keeping male freshmen in the undergrad dorms and giving them crappy furniture to destroy if the whim so strikes them.

While boots to the head shall definitely go out to those at the Office of Admissions and Records who have allowed their over-admittance addiction to get out of hand, The-Powers-That-Be at Housing haven't exactly stretched their minds and/or wills to impliment a more appropriate solution. A solution that would have preserved the integrity of Sherman as a grad dorm would have started with Housing contacting every over-20 year old resident in the undergraduate dorms, in descending order of credit hours accumulated, to offer them spots in Sherman Hall for no charge above-and-beyond what they would have paid for staying in the undergrad dorms. The spots in the undergrad dorms that were vacated by said upperclassmen would then have freshmen placed in them (since they really have no choice where Housing puts them anyway). All Large Double rooms thus vacated would then be filled as triples, so as to further reduce the strain on housing. Such a solution would keep one of the better places on campus to live from being degraded into undergraduate housing, with all the noise and bad hygine that entails.

And, just to grind a different axe, there's currently no one signed up to be an I-Guide for Sherman Hall, now that the program has been "fixed" (read: broken) to benefit only incoming freshmen.

:: The Squire 12:10 AM :: email this post :: ::
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