Housing contracts released after summer inquiry

An email from Residence Life was sent to second and third year students during the summer.

The contents of the email posed the possible option of releasing students from their 2017-2018 housing contract.

The email, from Diana Long, the Office of Residence Life housing coordinator, started off by boldly saying that it was an “inquiry only.”

Long then asked that “should the opportunity present itself where we [Residence Life] could release some second year students from the housing requirement, would you [students] be interested?”

Students interested in the opportunity were to respond to the email by June 15.

Jeff Takac, Director of Housing for the Office of Residence Life, said this email was sent because of the number of students that needed housing for the upcoming school year.

“Based on early freshmen enrollment numbers and the number of seniors desiring on-campus housing, as well as transfers requesting on-campus housing, we wanted to evaluate how many students already with on-campus housing may want to move off-campus,” he said.

Takac said that after the deadline, the results from student replies showed that many students were not interested in the option.

“About 3 percent showed some interest,” he said.

For the small percentage of second and third year students that did respond with interest, Takac said that they made the decision to release some of them from their housing contract.

“We released about 14 students (less than 1 percent) for various reasons based on their responses,” he said.

Although few students were released from their contract, Takac said that it didn’t result in any other changes for Residence Life for the upcoming year.

“We were able to accommodate most students as openings have come available when students have withdrawn from the university which occurred after our letter was emailed,” he said.

Takac said that along with trying to accommodate new students for the upcoming year, Residence Life has been doing some renovations on campus.

“We have replaced all couches in all our buildings with new leather couches, re-carpeted and painted Sherwood Hall, we’ve added new LVT flooring to numerous facilities,” he said. “We look forward to a great year in Housing!”