Lottery holds fate for students’ on-campus living

Nov 5 2009 - 1:08am | Kosaku Narioka

Current university housing residents will have to draw lottery tickets early spring semester if they want to live on campus next fall.

The Department of Housing and Residential Life introduced a housing policy that will require students under the age of 20 with fewer than 30 credit hours to live on-campus. The students who graduated from high school within a year will be required to live on campus regardless of their credit hours. The new policy will take effect next fall.

The adjustment came in response to growing freshmen enrollment and delayed housing construction projects.

Joanne Smith, vice president of Student Affairs, said the university staff will reserve about 15 percent of beds for those who will have met the requirements and is planning to conduct a lottery early spring for them.

She said university officials expect freshmen enrollment will continue to grow.

The university announced an adjustment to lower the credit hour requirement from 52 to 42 for this fall in the middle of last semester. Still, it turned out the number of students who are required to live on campus this fall exceeded the number of beds available.

Smith said at the July 9 President's Cabinet meeting, the number of students who wanted to live on campus has exceeded the capacity by 330 beds with additional applications pending, according to the minutes. The cabinet endorsed a set of recommendations Smith brought and suggested appropriate departments start a comprehensive review of the housing policy.

Rosanne Proite, director of Housing and Residential Life, said the the department staff sent e-mails to students and told them if they have more than 30 credit hours and lived on campus last year, the university can cancel their contracts.

“We had to let a lot of students out of their contracts and ask them to find some place to live off-campus,” Proite said.

She said 500 to 600 students took advantage of the option, and more students might have done so had the university acted sooner.

“They were away (from campus) and it was hard for them to try to find a place to live,” Proite said.

Part of the policy that will require recent high school graduates to live on-campus is new. Proite said more students are coming to the university with credit hours through Advanced Placement.

“We know by a large amount of research that has been done nationally that the freshman-year experience is the most important experience (for their academic success),” Proite said. “That's why we continue to have a freshman requirement.”

She said the adjustment is temporary and requirements could tighten again in five or six years.

This will depend on how fast the housing construction projects will progress.

University officials originally planned to build new housing as they demolish a few halls. Michael Petty, assistant director of Facilities Planning, Design and Construction, said Falls Hall is scheduled to be demolished after spring 2011 when the performing arts center project kicks off in June 2011. The north housing project at Sessom Drive and Comanche Street has been put temporarily on hold. It turned out the site had been filled with rubble and excavation materials, which make it more difficult to establish the foundation system. There is also a large underground drainage pipe that goes through the middle of the site.

He said those site issues are not “insurmountable challenge(s).”

“Any site has site constraints...whether it would be soil conditions, whether it would be drainage, whether it would be easements,” Petty said. “Any number of those things could play a role in delaying a project.”

Smith said the number of students who can be accommodated in the Sterry Hall will also decrease when a garage is constructed on the surface parking lot in two years.

Proite said the department staff will begin the sign-up process for the next school year in January. She expects they will have about 1,000 returning students with less than 30 credits and 800 to 900 returning students with more than 30 credits wanting to live on-campus.

Smith said the university has 6,139 bed spaces on campus. She said the lottery is new at Texas State, but a number of universities use the program.

Smith said she gave quarterly updates on what is happening on-campus to Austin Apartment Association members, and owners and managers of San Marcos apartment complexes to ensure communication between the university and local housing. The university is developing a Achieving Community Together Ally program in which local apartment complexes may earn recognition as an ACT Ally if they meet the expectations the university outlines.

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