Some West Chester University students living in on-campus dormitories are faced with another roommate added on to their two-student rooms. Along with a long housing waitlist, student lounges have recently been converted into temporary rooms as well.
According to the West Chester University website, “92% of first-year students live in campus-based housing or residence halls, and 40% of all undergraduates live on campus.”
In order to provide housing for as many students as possible, the Office of Residence Life and Housing Services placed students in triple rooms. Triple rooms are the standard double rooms, but with three students instead of two. Another solution currently in practice to accommodate students is turning lounge rooms into triple bedrooms.
One reason for this, according to the Extended Housing Policy on the university website’s Guide to Residential Living 2019, is because each year, “students do not notify the university that they will not be attending. If the University waits to confirm these spaces before housing is offered to students requesting to live on campus, many students would have to make other living arrangements.” There is a waitlist to live in the dorms, so triple rooms are created to shorten the list. First-year students are given priority for housing. Furthermore, “The University believes that the benefits of living on campus (closeness to classes and services, the opportunity to meet other students, and the opportunity to get involved in campus activities) outweigh the temporary inconvenience of living in extended housing. The University is committed to moving students out of extended housing situations as soon as spaces become available.”
I spoke to Nathan Marc, a first-year student currently living in a triple dorm in Goshen Hall, about his experience: “I would say I am having a good experience with living in a triple dorm. I feel like it doesn’t really matter how many people I live with, as long as we all get along with one another, but it is less spacious.” When I asked what it was like to live with multiple roommates in a tight space, he reflected on his past experiences: “It’s not hard to have more than one roommate, because I went to a boarding school and I lived in an apartment my senior year. It was two to three guys in a room and I was also tripled. Those guys are now my closest friends.”
Marc found out two weeks before Move-In Day that he would be getting another roommate. “My other roommate that I didn’t know at the moment had texted us out of the blue. I was really confused and kind of upset, but now I’m glad I got to meet him. He’s really cool!”
Although it may be inconvenient to live in a crowded room, these living situations are temporary. The Guide to Residential Living states that, “students living in a mandated triple housing situation will receive a reimbursement of one third of the room rate for every week that they live in triple housing.” Students receive this reimbursement after they are given a permanent room assignment.
For more information about housing, the Office of Residence Life and Housing Services can be called at 610-436-3307, or emailed at housing@wcupa.edu.
Alexis Lincoln is a fourth-year student majoring in English Writing and minoring in journalism. AL892562@wcupa.edu