by Emily Mosier
For the first time, applications to be on the on-campus housing waitlist closed after 200 submissions. The applications closed four minutes after opening Monday morning, and students were also unable to request a particular dormitory or roommates.
Troy’s Dean of Student Services, Herbert Reeves, said that last year, only around 200 students, out of more than 600, on the waitlist received housing. However, students were not notified if they would have housing or not until July.
The application limit is a response to complaints that this was too late to find affordable alternative housing.
Reeves said this year, the change allows those who did not make the waitlist to start looking for other living arrangements immediately instead of waiting until the summer.
“For the last five or six years, during Impact, we have shared the message that you need to plan to move off campus after your freshman year,” Reeves said. “The average benchmark number is that about 30% of students are housed on campus.
“You’re not necessarily going to be able to live on campus all four years.”
David Miller, a sophomore majoring in theater from Ozark, Alabama, said he was not able to submit a housing application when they opened at 8 a.m., as he was in class.
“It makes me feel that I didn’t get a fair opportunity to apply because of my busy college life not being taken into consideration,” Miller said. “I have no car and no way of finding a job, so I’ll need to rely on a roommate just to get on campus every day.”
“There’s no way that I really could satisfy everyone,” Reeves said. “Maybe we could have opened it in the middle of the night, but I don’t know.”
Many incoming freshmen, students with scholarships that pay for housing, and those with qualifying disabilities have already received housing assignments. No new applications will be accepted, not even from freshman, until move-in weekend in August.
Reeves said the change did not happen because of a big rise in the number of freshman admissions, as he said only about forty more freshman were admitted this year than last.
He also said that multiple solutions were considered to selecting who would stay on campus, including having a housing lottery, but they decided that the application limit was the fairest option.