When junior architecture student Albino Roman found out his dorm assignment, he wasn’t sure what to make of it and went online to check floor plans.

 

Roman was to live in a converted lounge space in DellPlain Hall with two others.

 

‘It’s a bummer that I’m in a triple, but it’s fine,’ Roman said. ‘It’s not that bad.’

 

Despite the addition of Ernie Davis Hall last year, Syracuse University faced a housing crunch for the 2010-11 academic year, due to an unusually large number of incoming first-year students. 

 

‘It’s just a matter of numbers,’ said Eileen Simmons, director of Housing, Meal Plan and I.D. Card Services.

 

SU originally hoped it would not have to use converted space, Simmons said. But SU is currently providing housing for 8,195 students, so it needed to convert lounges and study areas in main campus dormitories to open triples and quads that would accommodate the residents.

 

Boland, Booth, Brockway, Day, DellPlain, Flint, Lawrinson, Marion, Sadler and Shaw halls all have converted spaces serving as dorm rooms. Converted spaces still provide the same amenities and are located in dorms where another gathering area is still available, Simmons said.

 

No preference was put toward gender or class when housing assigned students to the converted lounges, Simmons said. But those in the spaces are more likely to be freshmen or sophomores, because of SU’s two-year housing policy, or students who applied for housing later.

 

But living in lounges is not uncommon, Simmons said. The practice has been common throughout her 20-plus years at SU, and SU housing became so overcrowded about five years ago that students were sent to live at the Sheraton Hotel.

 

Although students may be moved out of a converted space if rooms become available, no additional students will be moved in, Simmons said. She said she has so far heard no complaints from students living in the converted areas.

 

A student cannot change housing until another space opens up, and with the increase in on-campus students, this may become more difficult, Simmons said. But the housing office will not ignore a student’s unhappy living situation because of overcrowding.

 

‘If a student is unhappy, I would hope that between the RA, student and our office, we could work something out,’ Simmons said.

 

Students may apply to the housing change waitlist Nov. 22, with the expectation that they will not move until January, Simmons said.

 

The housing situation is expected to improve after the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry dormitory opens in fall 2011 and frees 200 beds for SU students, she said.

 

This year’s increase in on-campus residents was due to an unforeseen number of accepted students planning to come to the university, said Donald Saleh, vice president for enrollment management. He said SU sent out about the same number of acceptances to students, but heard about 150 more positive responses than anticipated.

 

Incoming class size is expected to settle around 3,450, Saleh said. Last year the number was 3,250.

 

Some students said converting lounges into rooms has somewhat disrupted normal dormitory life.

 

Jamie Wand, an undeclared freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences, lives with three other girls in an

open quad in a former DellPlain lounge.

 

With no lounge on the floor, Wand said the room has become an informal gathering spot for the floor residents. But she said not everyone on the floor will come to the lounge-turned-room. And with four people sharing the open space, there is a lack of privacy.

 

Overcrowding is not exclusive to SU.

 

Rutgers University began to house students at the Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn in Somerset, N.J. — hotels about four miles away from campus — last year, according to the university’s housing website.

 

The University of Iowa reported about 450 more first-year students in 2010 than in 2009, breaking a previous 2006 record, according to an Aug. 13 UI news release. The class size increase was attributed to a long-term campaign to increase first-year class size. To handle the increase, UI added more campus housing by converting buildings and leasing part of a privately owned apartment complex.

 

Madison Wright, an undeclared freshman in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, said she knew her situation could be a lot worse. She lives in an open triple in what used to be a study lounge in Booth and said she has friends at other universities in similar situations and cramped for space.

 

‘It’s almost like a treat to have this much room,’ Wright said.

 

She said she anticipated having to squeeze into a double and had no idea what the room would look like. Instead, she and two other girls share a room about 16 feet by 17 feet in size.

But Wright said the room’s location, tucked inside the floor’s lounge, is obscure and makes meeting other dorm residents difficult.

 

‘Sometimes they forget about us,’ Wright said. ‘But we weren’t supposed to exist.’

dkmcbrid@syr.edu