Housing crunch next year for students

Hillary Fizzari - fazzarih@plu.edu

mast news intern

The scramble for housing has some students concerned over whether or not they will get into their residence hall of choice. The question seems to be: Will there be enough room for everyone next year? Stephanie Serventi, the assistant director of Residential Operations, said the answer is yes.

“We are not concerned at this point,” Serventi said. “Every student who wants housing will receive housing.”

Residential Life has, at this point, received a larger number of housing applications from incoming first-years than usual, but Serventi said she thought they are probably just “more on the ball” this year than first-years have been in years previous.

She expects most returning students to be assigned one of their top three housing choices regardless of the incoming first-year applications top choices.

Because the housing assignment process is based upon priority points, or points awarded to students for age and number of academic credits taken, underclassmen usually do not have as good of a chance of getting the room they want as upperclassmen do.

“Typically, first-year students would be the ones to not get their first [housing] choice,” Serventi said, though she did warn that sophomores requesting a single room may not receive their top choice either.

To combat the on-campus housing issue altogether, many upperclassmen decide to move off campus and rent houses on their own.

“It’s cheaper,” said senior Catherine Stout, who spoke of the prospect of renting a house in the near vicinity.

Stout did not experience any problems when looking for off-campus housing.

“I had a house within three weeks,” she said.

Stout did confess that she struggled to find an all-girls house to live in.

“They’re not as common,” she said.

Sophomore Emily Haight, like Stout, had no difficulty finding off-campus living accommodations for next year.

“I am living with people who are already renting a house,” Haight said.

“I didn’t actually have to do any searching myself.”

Still, many lowerclassmen, especially those applying for entrance into the more popular residence halls, are nervous about the outcome of the housing assignments. First-year Kerri Carlsen is one of those lowerclassmen.

Carlsen admitted to being a little nervous.

“I’m trying to get into Hinderlie...there is a possibility I might not be able to room with the person I wanted,” Carlsen said.

Housing assignments will be posted April 23 at 5 p.m. on the Residential Life Web site at www.plu.edu/~rlif.