With enrollment on the rise and budget cuts effecting students campuswide, many students seeking on-campus housing were left with no where to go when they returned at the start of the semester. Southern’s Residential Life department had filled every available room, reaching its limit of 2,200 students before the end of the first week of school.
The lack of on-campus space left students seeking other options, at least 50 male students were left without housing and asked to temporarily stay with friends and family.
Residential Life reopened Bethune Hall — which has been closed for two years due to the drop in enrollment — temporarily to assist male students left without a room. University officials said the dormitory should hold up to 140 additional male students.
Head resident Lisa Ham-mond said cable should be installed soon, along with air conditioning units in the lobby to provide comfort of students spending time in Bethune’s lobby.
As enrollment rises, it is agreed that more dormitories need to become available to students seeking on campus residency. Assistant director Morris Anderson said he does not see any new residences being built in the immediate future in the current economic climate.
”In order to receive funding for new residential halls, Residential Life has to show a demand for new resident construction,” Anderson said. “We will support the chancellor’s imitative to show there is a need for more residential houses. We can’t build a residential hall and it be empty on a long term bases, but be a consistent pattern for on campus living.”
Other efforts have also been made by Residential Life to accommodate students and to make campus living more desirable. Boley Hall housed male students last year, but is currently being used to house female students. Anderson says a bed was removed from each room to create a more private setting in Boley, a decision in hopes to entice students to move into the dorm. Though Boley Hall will remain open, the status of her brother dormitory — John Sebastian Jones Hall—remains unknown.
Another male dormitory, Bradford Hall, is expected to be reopened Fall 2010.
“When they give me Bradford back, two more will be needed in addition, to avoid housing problems in the future,” Anderson said. “My statement to administration or whomever is taking the residential hall for repair is, when you take down one you can’t just give me one back but you must give me two resident halls in order to take one back.”
Students must re-apply for housing annually because contracts are only good for one year, officials said. Priority deadlines will remain the same each semester until further notice. Students seeking housing for Fall 2010 should fill out an application no later than Dec. 20. Students currently housed do not have to reapply for Spring 2010, but those who are not currently housed have until Nov. 1 to apply for the spring. The Summer 2010 deadline is May 1.
All students looking to move off campus must cancel their housing as early as possible. Confirmations on room assignments will be sent electronically to student e-mail accounts starting Fall 2010.
”We are trying to get out of the paper business and will do a test run this summer of sending confirmations to student’s email accounts,” Anderson said.
On-campus room inspections are expected to begin in the upcoming week, Anderson said, and will be conducted monthly in the University Apartments and weekly in all other dormitories.
“Room inspections are necessary to inspect rooms for safety, policy and we want to make sure we are checking on our students as well; not just to make sure rooms are clean,” Anderson said. “We do want the rooms to be maintained properly. We want to make sure rules and regulations are followed and that students are not sick.”
Students either living in or interested in living in University Apartments asked questions regarding purchasing meal plans when the apartments are equipped with stove tops for student use. Anderson said Southern’s food service contract requires all on-campus student pay for a meal plan. Another area of student concerns is not on the radar of Residential Life at this moment.
“At this time there is no plan on the agenda to make them co-ed,” Anderson said. “We have to put a proposal together and it is not feasible at this time.”
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Open Again
September 3, 2009
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