Joelle Lang-Fredman
WMAL.com
COLLEGE PARK — (WMAL) The University of Maryland’s freshman class has grown by almost 600 students this year.
It’s now leaving the Department of Resident Life with a challenge- where will they sleep?
In order to allow every freshman the opportunity to live on campus, the Department changed its policy to allow students to cancel their housing arrangements in the summer without penalty.
Normally, a student who decided over the summer that they did not want to live in a dorm would need approval by the Department to break their living agreement contract. This year however, the department allowed students to break contracts without any questions in order to free up more rooms in dorms for freshmen who wanted to live there.
The department also rearranged lounges and rooms in resident halls to accommodate for more beds.
“Because we knew we wanted to get the last few freshmen in we decided to convert five lounges on all of our campus to what we call temporary quad rooms,” Scott Young, Associate Director for Administrative and Business Services for the Department of Resident Life, said.
Some doubles, or rooms with two beds, were also reconfigured to fit an extra bed.
Now that more space has opened up in dorms by students who did not show up, four of the lounges have been changed back to their original forms.
While all of the freshmen who wanted to live on campus were able to this year, fewer transfer students were offered on campus housing.
“The challenge though, unfortunately, was probably faced by our transfer students because the influx of students who were coming in as freshmen really didn’t offer us the ability to house as many transfer students as we’ve done in the past,” Young said.
Young said it is very important for freshmen to be able to live on campus.
“It is a right of passage to move into a residence hall and spend a year getting to know other students, experiencing the same things that other students are experiencing in our residence hall systems,” Young said.
It is also an issue of safety. “I know that if something happens in the middle of the night in a residence hall, there are staff members there who are going to help assist with the problem,” Young said. “We offer 24/7 support.”
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(Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Albert Herring)
