When University of Maine junior-to-be Charlotte Roe decided to live on campus for the 2014-15 school year, she thought it’d be like every other.
She’d get the convenience of on-campus housing, meal plans and community. On Feb. 18, she received an email that would change that. As part of a new procedural change, juniors and seniors with less than 40 credits would have to find off-campus housing. Roe had 39. A few weeks later, the 20-year-old journalism student from Bellport, N.Y. found herself signing one of the five remaining leases at Orchard Trails.
“It’s disappointing,” Roe said. “You look forward to going to college and a true college experience and having your college tell you there’s no room for you here — I personally think it’s a loss because I really do enjoy being here.”
Roe isn’t the only one. Before spring break, UMaine Housing Services sent an email to students in the residence halls notifying them of a change in housing placement procedures. Now, sophomores will be given priority based on their credit hours, while juniors and seniors have the options of Oak, DTAV and Patch. Previously, sophomores, juniors and seniors were placed based on credit hours.
First-year students continue to receive guaranteed housing. Starting in Fall 2014, York Hall will become a first-year dorm. Honors’ housing — a mix of first-year, sophomores, juniors and seniors — will not change.
With 173 students still on a waitlist for on-campus housing, time is running short. Between Orono and Old Town, upwards of 43 properties and some single rooms remain available for rent, according to off-campus listings and local housing property managers. However, only 3,264 beds will be available through UMaine Housing in 2014, 21 less than in 2013.
To account for a growing first-year class, Housing Services increased their first-year housing by 121 beds from the Fall 2013 semester. Sophomores were allotted 118 more spaces while juniors and seniors lost 296 beds. According to UMaine’s Office of Institutional Research, enrollment in 2012 was 7,477, while enrollment in 2013 was 7,874 students, with a total first-year enrollment of 2,166 people.
Despite an increase in allotted sophomore housing, a larger increase in first-year classes created a “domino effect” leaving 149 of the sophomores who applied without housing.
Ashley Thibeault, a senior who received housing, was nervous about her prospects when she saw the email announcement. She sees living on campus as a way to get involved.
“[While living on-campus,] I was able to interact with more upperclassmen. They have experience,” Thibeault said. “Involving your upperclassmen is a good plan. They lead groups and improve campus life.”
Shawn Berry, a senior Journalism student, has one more semester in his undergraduate career. Campus housing was necessary for him, enabling him to move for employment upon graduation in December 2014.
“[I thought,] ‘Am I going to have a place to live?’” he said. “It’s something I have to brace for.”
The announcement has left students feeling lost in their housing search in what Daniel Sturrup, Executive Director of Auxiliary Services, called, a painful situation but a good decision for the institution.
According to Sturrup, Residence Life approached him in November 2013 to discuss a change in student housing that would allocate more beds for sophomores in order to provide better advising and support through a Second Year Experience (SYE) program.
“The SYE began two years ago, because we find that many second-year students continue to face both academic and social struggles,” said Kelly Beers, Assistant Director of Residence Life. “It has been hard to program to the needs of second-year students when they are scattered throughout various residence halls. By consolidating them into a few buildings, we are better able to meet their needs.”
Continued access to advising and on-campus housing has been shown to increase retention rates for sophomores, while access to on-campus housing has shown no significant change in retention rates among juniors and seniors, Jimmy Jung, Vice President of Student Enrollment, said.
At UMaine, about one in five students leave school between their first and second year, while only one and 10 leave between years two and three, according to Assistant Vice President for Student Life Kenda Scheele.
After looking at the retention models and Jung’s enrollment projections, Sturrup decided that he “didn’t want to suddenly push that many juniors and seniors off-campus. So I agreed to increase the space for sophomores.”
Even though the plan was in the works since the fall semester, Sturrup could not move on any change in the housing procedure until Jung confirmed the number of incoming students in January.
“We didn’t know what our demands were going to be [for on-campus housing],” Sturrup said.
Confirming the size of any incoming class is difficult because many students wait to pick their university until they have had a chance to review all the offers from competing schools, and with an increasing number of out-of-state students coming to the university, exact estimates come later in the spring, Jung said.
“We don’t know how the students are going to behave,” Jung said, who mentioned an increasing number of out-of-state students often take longer to commit to UMaine.
Once projections were finalized, Housing Services sent out an email on Feb. 18 informing on-campus students of the change. The announcement, which usually comes after spring break, came early due to a push from Sturrup to get the information to students quickly.
According to Barbara Smith, staff associate at the Commuter and Nontraditional Student Program, most good properties are leased by January or February, making March sign-ups for on-campus housing complicated for students.
Smith, who has 25 years of experience in Residence Life and nine years in the Commuter and Nontraditional Student Program, keeps an online listing of local available properties.
There are currently five properties available in Orono totaling at six beds, compared to 15 houses in Old Town coming to 33 beds. Additionally, according to The Maine Campus’ research, there are four apartments still available though Cross Properties and five beds available at Orchard Trails. Numbers for The Grove are unavailable, but the property was confirmed to be over three-fourths full.
As of Friday, Housing Services’ waitlist totaled 173 students: five seniors, 19 juniors and 149 sophomores.
According to Smith, her office has received more calls from students and parents regarding off-campus housing than in years past. The calls also came sooner.
“I think the parents who called me were distressed, even before March break,” Smith said.
Sturrup said most of his complaints came from sophomores who did not receive housing.
Yet Scheele, Smith and Sturrup believe there are resources available for students who did not receive on-campus housing.
Scheele encourages any students who are struggling with housing to meet with her.
“Our goal and hope is not to push people off campus,” she said. “[We] always want to help students as they reach and push for their goals.”
According to Beers, at the end of February there was a renter’s fair, which allowed students to meet local landlords.
Beers said if students did not attend the Renter’s Fair, the Commuter and Nontraditional Student Program’s website has “a lot of great information for students looking for off-campus rentals.” There is also a “Housing” folder on FirstClass where students can find listings for apartments, sublets and students seeking roommates.
In another attempt to help students, Sturrup lowered cancellation fees for room agreements. From May 1 to June 30 the cancellation fee will be $150 and from July forward there will be a flat fee of $250. In years prior, after the academic year began cancellation fees were on a sliding scale starting at 30 percent of total room rate — increasing as the year continued.
According to Smith, moving off campus can be a challenging decision some students aren’t ready for.
“I think earlier would have been better than later. People go through that [frustration] when major changes happen in their lives and where you’re going to live can be that way. You have to go through a, sort of, process in your head, rearranging and rethinking that and getting all those questions in,” she said.
Sturrup said he realized there were some “unintended consequences” for students when the procedural change was made: “I do think we could have gotten [the email] out a little bit better but, it was not from malice and not from being crass about it.”
“We really want to do the right [thing] for students. I still stand behind our decisions — I think they were the best decisions for this institution but there are unintended consequences and I do feel bad about that. I don’t take it lightly.” Sturrup said.
A potential aid to students looking for off-campus housing may come in the form of a new complex similar to the Grove.
In February, the New York-based Park 7 Development LLC proposed a student housing development behind Washburn Drive, which, once approved by the Orono Town Planning Board, would be ready as early as fall 2015, housing up to 900 students.
Sturrup acknowledged the need for more beds on campus, and hopes to present a proposal to the board of trustees once a footprint has been identified.
“We’ve identified the York [Hall] area as the [location] we’d like to revitalize,” Sturrup said. “We know we’re growing, and we’ll time it [the residence hall] when we think it will be most successful.”
The proposed residence hall may encroach on the York Village Complex, which stopped housing students after Patch Hall opened in 2000 and no new housing developments have been built since. Any new residence hall in the York area would require installation of necessary utilities, including steam lines, and Sturrup is working with Sasaki Associates to ensure a new complex would fit within the campus master plan.
New beds would be phased in 450 at a time and increased to meet students’ rising demand for on-campus housing, according to Sturrup.
The Blue Sky Plan projects that the total student population could rise as high as 15,000 in five years. President Paul Ferguson hopes to maintain the same ratio of students on and off-campus, which means housing “needs to grow by around 1,200 [beds],” Sturrup said.