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BY APOLLINE BERTY

In print | February 1, 2007

Swarthmore juniors that had been abroad for fall semester have returned to overflowing dormitories. According to Housing Coordinator Liz Derickson, “over 100 students went abroad this fall and about 50-something went this spring.”

Trends in housing availability are dictated largely by student preferences. “Some years, more students choose to go abroad in the spring than in the fall, but for whatever reason, that wasn’t the case this semester,” Myrt Westphal, the associate dean for student life, said.

The housing crunch has been felt most acutely in Dana and Hallowell, where all the lounges have been converted into rooms to accommodate the incoming students. On each floor of Hallowell there are two lounges, with the exception of the basement, which has only one. As Hallowell Third RA Tommy Bennett ’07 explained, since more juniors than usual were abroad, both lounges on each floor remained as such during the fall. However, now that the students have come back they have all been converted into rooms. This is not the first semester that that lounge space has been converted into living space. During previous housing crunches, beds were moved into the lounges to increase the number of rooms available to returning students.

Matt Conan ‘08 and Alex Mitchell ’08, two juniors who have just returned from Spain and Prague respectively, were not disappointed with the improvised accommodations. “I really love living in a lounge,” said Mitchell. "It’s bigger than any room I’ve been in before," Conan said.

“Much to our sadness, we did have to convert several lounge spaces in Dana and Hallowell into rooms for returning students. Of course, the returning students were very happy to have those rooms, but it does cut into the quality of hall life to some extent,” Westphal said.

The only inconvenience for Conan and Mitchell is that their room lacks phone jacks, requiring that they use the hall phone outside of their room. According to Derickson, Restech was responsible for installing working phone and data jacks in all of the converted lounges.

Because there are now only two lounges accessible to the residents of Dana and Hallowell, RAs are working with the administration to convert the trailer into a lounge equivalent.

“We’re going to work on getting the trailer functional,” Derickson said. According to Bennett, RAs are “working to find a way to make the trailer accessible but not let it get trashed.”

Though Conan would rather not have to walk in the cold to the trailer to hang out, Mitchell said he would welcome the additional lounge space.

Though Dana and Hallowell are probably the most evident example of the housing overflow this spring, the other dorms have also been subject to it. Derickson used Mary Lyon basement as an example. “ML basement had several empty beds last semester, but now it is mostly filled.” Most of the returning students have been put in doubles in Hallowell, or in ML, but there are a few who have obtained singles for this semester.

According to Derickson, 13 people went to Hallowell, 10 to Mary Lyon, nine to Wharton, eight to Dana and a handful to Parrish, Palmer, Willets and Worth. These figures do not include cases of joint tenancy, where a returning student moves in with a student that had already been on campus the past semester.

Alyssa Van Thoen ‘08 went to France during the fall and was one of the lucky juniors to get a single. "I feel really lucky to have gotten a single, even if it’s in Willets," she said. “I actually had the highest number in the junior class for the December lottery. It’s kind of funny that with the highest number I ended up in Willets, but I can imagine worse places to be.”

“We’re not really sure what happened this year,” Wesphal said. “Yes, there is a housing crunch and it’s a problem, but it’s definitely been worse in the past, particularly before the construction of Alice Paul,” she said.

In the past, these problems have been influenced by world events. “Previous housing crunches were related to 9/11, the international terrorist threat, and instability in the Middle East. Students were very reluctant to study abroad during those times, so we had to find housing for them on campus,” Westphal said. However, this year, most students simply preferred to study abroad during the fall semester rather than the spring.

Before the construction of Alice Paul dorm, the college had placed students in overflow housing, like the seventh floor of Strath Haven. “The seventh floor has not been in use in a couple of years and it remains in our stock of overflow housing should there be a need for it,” Westphal said.

“It will be necessary to update the seventh floor so that students living there will have access to the same internet and technology as students on campus. As far as the accommodations, it’s a perfectly nice living space with college furniture and an RA in the building, just like any other dorm,” Westphal said.

Housing overflows may continue to be seen in the college’s future, though the eventual construction of the new dorm slated to commence next spring should mitigate the effects of the housing crunch.

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