Letting Out the Seams

An overcrowding scare this fall turned out to be mostly molehill when the dust settled and term got underway. True, at the beginning of September, 200 freshmen were without Hinman mail boxes and the Student Housing Office had 75 more dorm applications than it had available beds, but William Crooker, director of Student Housing, had soothing explanations.

A shipment of 300 new mailboxes $7,000 worth due to arrive August 1 got lost "on a truck heading north" and did not arrive until the end of October, with the result that for a couple of months the hapless 200 had to queue for their mail. The waiting list for dormitory beds waned and disappeared during the first few days of the term, the problem having been created largely (though not totally) by students covering themselves by making backup application for dorm space while they located the off-campus housing they preferred.

The number of students living off campus has been increasing in recent years, said Crooker, in part because his office has adopted a new policy of encouraging the oversubscribed contingent to find offcampus housing rather than crowding them into existing dormitories by putting three students into rooms designed for two an overcrowding practice the College engaged in heretofore. Currently, some 275 students live off campus, according to Crooker, most of whom want to be off campus. Those who did not and who remained houseless when fall term began were, in the end, all accommodated in dormitory rooms turned down at the last minute. "It makes a lot of people unhappy because sometimes we can't tell students where they will be living until the day school begins," sympathized Crooker. "They end up okay, but it's hairy for a while."

The new dormitory now under construction on the western side of the campus, scheduled for occupancy in the fall of 1982, will ease the situation considerably, said Crooker.