Several residence halls will no longer be available to the class years for which they had originally been designated, according to an updated housing lottery plan the Residential Council posted on its webpage Wednesday.
With the number of doubles in Perkins, the building will be able to house enough students to eliminate summer assignment for sophomores
Hegeman Hall and Slater Hall will be open only to juniors and seniors, while Perkins Hall will become a sophomore-only residence hall.
The changes posted on the webpage are different from those originally outlined last spring in a comprehensive revamping of class housing assignments. The University had originally planned on designating Hegeman and Slater as sophomore-only options and changing Perkins from a first-year to an upperclassmen dorm, The Herald reported last February.
But Richard Bova, senior associate dean of residential and dining services, said the previous plans had not been finalized and have since been changed. The old housing redesigns “were placed on the table to see how we could make the occupancy work,” Bova said.
The ongoing planning process for residential life includes staffing the residence halls, re-conceptualizing renovation, conducting renewal work and creating sophomore communities, Bova said.
Sophomore communities were originally slated to be in the main core of campus but have now been split between main campus and south campus.
The Office of Residential Life was unable to convert Perkins into junior and senior singles this year due to budgetary constraints and because the office not yet received authorization for renovating the building from the University, Bova said. But ResLife hopes to convert Perkins to singles in the future, he added.
A sophomores-only Perkins does have benefits, said Kristina von Gerichten ’13, policy committee chair on ResCouncil.
“(Perkins) will be a great option for students who are in music and theater,” von Gerichten said, noting the dorm’s proximity to the Orwig Music Library and T.F. Green Hall. She added that engineering students will benefit from a short walk to Barus & Holley.
Sophomores will also benefit from the increase in housing exclusively reserved for members of their class, wrote ResCouncil Chair Travis Spangler ’13 in an email to The Herald. In response to complaints by sophomores that they were too scattered across campus, ResLife, ResCouncil and the administration have made a concerted effort to move sophomores closer together on campus, Spangler wrote.
Hegeman will still undergo renovations, but the building is no longer intended to house only sophomores, Spangler wrote. The Hegeman housing option will remain for juniors since they are already prevalent in Hegeman and tend to prefer singles to doubles, he added.
“I think that juniors will be pleased that Hegeman is staying in their pot,” Bova said, adding that the University is “not just casting the sophomores to the wind” with these updated changes.
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