Housing Hunt Begins At BU

Students’ mailboxes were flooded last week with white envelopes marked, “Open Immediately.” What piece of mail was so important that it called for immediate action? The 2002-03 Housing License forms.

Director of Housing Marc Robillard said there are approximately 10,550 beds on campus with an equal number of students applying for housing. A number of beds will be lost, as Loretto Hall will no longer be contracted as a student dorm next year. The students living in Loretto currently will be categorized as displaced students and will join the community in choosing rooms for next year, Robillard said.

“They will not have a problem,” he said. “There’s plenty of room.”

The close ratio did not appeal to many students, several of whom said they had bad experiences with housing selection last year.

“It was a mess; everything was delayed. I had to wait at my appointment for over an hour,” said Anna Toczynski, a School of Management junior. Toczynski, who said she had a relatively good number in the housing lottery, did not get her first choice to live in an apartment on Bay State Road and heard rumors it was due to the opening of the Student Village for off-campus students looking to move back into dorms.

“It’s all hearsay, but it was believed that BU let a bunch of students who lived off campus back on campus, which they’re not supposed to do,” said Todd Etzel, a College of Engineering sophomore. “This left a huge bubble in the housing selection, and it ended up that a lot of future sophomores couldn’t even get into Warren Towers.”

Etzel said he avoided the problem by choosing to live in the same Warren Towers single where he was currently living.

Michael Birnbaum, a College of Communication sophomore, was able to avoid the housing confusion by being pulled into an on-campus apartment, but he said he heard people complaining of the process.

“Three of my friends were told they had a triple in Myles [Standish] but found out they were switched to Claflin,” Birnbaum said. “Fortunately, they were able to switch with someone and get their triple back, but they were so jaded by the system that they are moving off campus.”

Robillard denied there were problems within the housing system.

“There really wasn’t a problem,” said Robillard. “Our supply perfectly met the demand.”

For the 2000-01 school year, 817 more students requested housing than for the previous year. The need was met with the opening of 10 Buick St., the Student Village, which holds 817 students.

“The first year wasn’t a problem because the students didn’t know [10 Buick St.] existed,” Robillard said. “After that, it became a very attractive housing possibility for juniors and seniors. Students thought it would be easier to get in, but this wasn’t true.”

The process of internally selecting a room in your current dorm is very easy, and almost always guaranteed, Robillard said.

Christina O’Neill, an SMG junior, is living in Myles Standish for a second year.

“I was already living in Myles as a sophomore, and I figured with junior standing that I would be able to get into an on campus apartment, but I was unable to and ended up living here again,” she said. “A lot of upperclassmen stayed on campus last year because they thought they could live in the Student Village, so chances of getting into a better dorm weren’t as good.”

Both O’Neill and Toczynski said they are not applying for housing as seniors and are getting off-campus apartments instead.

Robillard said while he cannot predict what will happen in housing this year, he thinks more students will be moving off campus.

“Because of the downturn in the economy, more apartments around campus are available and cost much less,” he said.

According to Robillard, the last time the economy was in a downturn, 1991, off-campus housing went up. Since then the demand to live on campus has been greater and the percentage of cancellations in reserving on-campus housing has drastically gone down.