Eric Zuniga, Campus Carrier news editor

Building renovations, early arrivals and a larger than projected incoming class have caused Residence Life to make adjustments to housing arrangements and move-in plans as the Fall semester begins. 

According to Director of Residence Life Stephen Swieton, changes to housing assignments are made every summer as enrollment numbers fluctuate. Planning for this year, however, has been complicated by the bungled roll-out of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which pushed back deadlines for incoming students to commit to Berry.

“We had some other challenges with first-year housing assignments — one of the big ones was the roll-out of FAFSA, which had a number of issues and delays,” Swieton said. “It took us a little bit longer to know for sure what numbers [we are] looking at here on campus.”

Swieton said that more new students were admitted this year than projected during initial planning in January. About 200 returning students on the housing waitlist were moved to a different space over the summer to keep freshmen in typical first-year residence halls. 

“There are places where we have beds available, but it’s not where you want to place first-year students because they’re not first-year communities,” Swieton said. “That process of shifting [students on the waitlist] ultimately gets us the spaces in our first-year communities to place our first-year students.”

Residence Life has also opened new spaces to accommodate greater than expected housing needs. The two-bedroom staff apartment in Morton-Lemley, which was unoccupied, will now house six incoming male students. A common space in Oak Hill, which was used as a hotel suite before Berry acquired the building, has also been converted to student housing.

“We’ve done this over the past few years in a number of different places,” Swieton said. “There is some other flexible space we’ve got if we need it for an emergency. We don’t want to use everything we have, because if there’s an emergency, you have to have spaces.”

Additionally, Residence Life approached some seniors over the summer with the option to live off campus, despite the college’s earlier decision not to offer a Senior Process this year.

“We were still working with students when the deposit deadline got extended, and that created a lot of wrinkles,” Sweiton said. “So we did reach out to senior males with 90 or more completed credit hours to say if you’re interested, let us know, but we did not open up a brand-new senior process for all seniors.”

This year’s move-in process has also been complicated by a large number of early arrivals. About 700 returning students moved in early this year. Over half of the residents in Thomas Berry arrived early and were required to live in temporary housing until renovations were wrapped up last weekend. 

“In a normal year, you only would have had a couple students go into temporary spaces,” Swieton said. “Over half of our students are back to campus early, and that creates a challenge. You’ve got that many people trying to come back, but you’ve got to kind of work out the puzzle of how do we get everybody moved who’s already here, but you can’t move them into their spaces until their space is all ready.”

Junior Nancy Daniel lived in temporary housing for three days until her suite in Thomas Berry was ready for move-in. She said that Residence Life handled the unexpected situation well. 

“I think they handled it pretty well about where to place everybody, and they were able to get me with someone I was rooming with [in Thomas Berry],” Daniel said. “It worked out pretty well for me, and the move-in process from Dana — that’s where I was staying — to Thomas Berry was pretty simple.”

Daniel added that Residence Life could have better communicated early arrival details.

“I didn’t know if they were supposed to or not, but they never emailed me about where my temporary stay was going to be,” Daniel said. “When I tried to email them about it throughout the summer, they didn’t reply — I don’t know if that’s because they were busy. When I got here, they told me where I was staying, but it would have been nice to know a little bit ahead of time.”

Senior Jessica Ford has encountered issues with room assignments during her time at Berry. She said that Residence Life attempted to place a third bed in her dorm at the start of her sophomore year, despite there only being space for two dressers and desks in the room. She was also uncertain about whether a new resident would be assigned to her room after her roommate left for a study abroad program in the middle of that year. 

Ford said that Residence Life should be clearer and more proactive in its communications with students. 

“I don’t like how vague the communication style is, because it’s always this vibe of ‘something could happen,’” Ford said. “I wish it was more concise and clear and I wish they would give timelines for things — I’m going to have this information to you by X date or something.” 

With much of the uncertainty around room selection every year being caused by the limited availability of non-traditional housing, Ford said that Berry should expand its housing options to accommodate more students. 

“The fact that the only single rooms you can have effectively are Centennial, which you really don’t even have the opportunity to get until senior year and also is a significant upcharge, is something worth note,” Ford said. “Being aware of accommodations for students who might potentially need to be in singles, I think, is important.”

According to Swieton, the addition of 75 beds on the third floor of the Health Sciences building currently under construction will significantly reduce Berry’s housing constraints.

“I think everything will change with that,” Swieton said. “When you talk about a campus of our size, 75 beds is a significant change.”

Although many students would prefer to live in single spaces, Swieton said that Berry should still preserve Martha Berry’s vision of a residential campus. 

“Sometimes the desire for what we could have versus the spaces we do have don’t always match, but it doesn’t mean we don’t have space,” Swieton said. “When we think of Martha Berry and her ideas of what Berry as a community should be, this is very much in line with that. We do believe in the value of living with other people and that’s part of the Berry education.”

Despite the complications in this year’s room assignment and move-in process, Swieton reminded students that Residence Life always manages the housing system carefully. 

“It is not just pure chaos — there is a structure to all of it, there is a process,” Swieton said. “We can’t always do the thing that every student wants us to do all the time, but in the big picture of things, this is what it takes to keep it moving.”