Housing Scramble: Bring in the Double-Wides

by Darren G. Thomas

The class of 2005 created problems for the administration before it even arrived on campus.

An unusually large entering freshman class overextended the College’s housing options and left administrators scrambling for student housing options. 1150 students planned to matriculate in the class of 2005. A typical entering class contains around 1075 students.

The administration offered free room and board for the 2006 school year to any freshman who deferred matriculation for a year. Seventeen students accepted this offer, meaning the class of 2005 would matriculate sixty more students than the College intended.

149 sophomores found themselves on the housing waiting list at the end of July. The Office of Residential Life scrambled to find places to house students. ORL turned study lounges into dorm rooms, converted double-occupancy rooms into triple occupancy spaces, and planned the construction of modular housing. The administration decided to leave empty the now vacant buildings of the derecognized fraternities Phi Delta Alpha and Zeta Psi.

In mid-August the Hanover zoning board approved ORL’s variance to build five temporary houses near the River dormitories. Only three of these modular units were ready at the start of the fall term. The College placed still-homeless students into temporary apartments at 41 West Wheelock St. and into apartments on East Wheelock St. until the housing was ready.

Students found the West Wheelock apartment complex, located near the foot of the bridge into Vermont, without ethernet, proper furniture, or activated telephone or cable connections. Students have no means of Internet access in their apartments. Director of Housing Lynn Rosenblum suggested that students call Verizion and activate the phone service at their own expense, a $64 charge.

The apartments are small for the three students assigned to each. ORL assured students the apartments were two bedroom. The second bedroom is a mudroom, hardly large enough for a bed. One apartment lacked a shower curtain, a lid on the toilet, and lights. ORL has made no indication they will compensate students for the extras they have had to buy for the apartment.

"There was grass growing from the drain of our shower," said one resident. "We have no lights," he added. "These apartments weren’t made for students."

The sophomores housed in the building on East Wheelock are faring far better. Each apartment has two large bedrooms, a living room, dining room, a screened-in-porch, and a kitchen. Both the students on East Wheelock and the students on West Wheelock pay the same rent. Neither Dean of Residential Life Marty Redman nor Director of Housing Lynn Rosenblum would talk to the Review about how it was decided which students would live where or why the apartments cost the same to rent.

Rosenblum sent an e-mail on Friday notifying the students in the temporary apartments that the modular housing would be ready to inhabit some time in the next week. Rosenblum said that students could stay in their apartments but would have to pay utility bills. Some students in the apartments on East Wheelock expressed anger because they were originally told over the summer that they would be in the apartment all term. ORL has not made any special arrangements to help sophomores move their belongings to the modular houses.

Dartmouth’s nascent modular housing leaves much to be desired. Each house boards 14 residents on two floors. The houses are single sex by floor with one bathroom per floor. The rooms are the smallest doubles on campus, at around 135 square feet. This makes them about 60 square feet smaller than the doubles in the Choates, previously the smallest rooms on campus. The modular housing also has no laundry machines or common areas. Students will use the laundry machines in the River dorms. The Hanover Zoning Board has asked the College to limit the use of this housing to three years, though the College is not obliged to abide by this request. The Choates, built in the late 1950’s, started off as temporary housing but have lived on well past their expiration date (both architecturally and structurally).

The College currently charges the same rent, $1573 a term, for all housing on campus regardless of size. Students living in the apartments on West Wheelock, without a phone, are paying the same price as the students on East Wheelock. And those students that move into the tree houses next week will pay the same rent for their 135 square foot double as for their apartment with a dining room and kitchen. One student living in the West Wheelock complex had this to say, "I’m paying the same rent for my apartment as kids in [the] East Wheelock dorms. And they’re outside having a catered seafood dinner, which I was kicked out of for not living there."