A native of New York City, freshman Sharif Mansour came to the University, in part, because he wanted the “dorm experience,” something he wouldn’t have gotten staying close to home in the Big Apple.
Sharing what used to be a lounge on the 10th floor of Offenhauer East with three other male students wasn’t what he expected. But now, Mansour, like many others living in lounges this year, would like to turn the temporary housing solution into a permanent one.
A total of 29 males–mostly freshmen–are being housed temporarily in enclosed lounges this year in Offenhauer, said Linda Newman, executive director of Residence Life. Most rooms are housing four students.
“I don’t want to move– it’s a hassle,” said Mansour. “(The lounge) is big enough to have a lot of people (and) if you learn to cooperate, it’s fine.”
Many students who’ve been staying in lounges this year say they’re too settled to leave now.
The dilemma of forcing students to move into a traditional room space isn’t easy to solve, Newman said.
Armond Harris, a freshman, echoes Mansour’s views and said he’d rather continue living in a lounge. Harris has two roomates.
“I don’t mind it. It’s spacious,” said Harris, who lives on the sixth floor of Offenhauer East. “I’d rather just stay like this.”
But as of Friday, the Office of Residence Life was planning to stick to their goal of moving all 29 students into traditional residence hall rooms by the end of the month, Newman said. The students are paying the standard room rate–$481 less than the Offenhauer double occupancy rate.
The Office has identified 120 open spots campuswide, Newman said, and will be giving priority to students living in Offenhauer lounges to place them in traditional rooms. Students can begin switiching rooms as early as today, she said.
Spaces are available in and Offenhauer, Anderson and several single suites in Founders are open. However the majority of these are designated female spaces, Newman said, which can make the process of filling open beds tricky.
Every year it’s a guessing game when it comes to what spaces will be available for males and females, Newman said.
“Whether (students) choose to come is really random and so that’s why we get thrown off balance with men and women because we never know precisely until the very last minute how many are coming of each gender,” she said.
With an unknown number of students backing out of residence hall payments each year, Residence Life staff doesn’t know exactly how many they’ll be housing until students don’t show.
“We could have put more people into lounges banking on (students not coming) … but for us to start the year off on the premise that we’re going to be shuffling around a hundred-plus students, that’s not the best beginning for those students,” Newman said. “It’s this tightrope balancing act of what you do. You try to make the best possible decision for each and every student.”
But when it comes to moving into a new environment during the thrid week of classes, Newman said she can’t blame students for not wanted to pack up and leave.
It’s a problem that Residence Life staff have seen in the past, Newman said, when students are put into a larger space that still has all the services of a two-person residence hall room–cable, phone and ethernet lines and now wireless Internet in Offenhauer.
For the past few years, 20-30 students have been temporarily housed in lounges, Newman said.
“There’s a real fine balance of when do you ask them to leave,” she said. “They’ve connected with the community on the floor where they are and so then the difficult decision point for us is asking them to leave and move to a new community they’re not a part of with a new roommate.”
Leaving his floor community is something that Mansour isn’t looking forward to, he said. By now, he “knows his neighbors” and Resident Advisor, he said.
And so far his roommates–even with varied interests– haven’t had any problems getting along, he said.
“I don’t know how we do, but we do,” he said, laughing. “It’s a good place for socializing in your own space.”
