Talking Stick - November/December 2018 - 57

Steve Gilmore: New student enrollment numbers were higher this year,
in addition to a slight increase in
returning residents. We did not have
overflow for fall of 2017.

TS: How did the larger number affect
your plans? Were you able to easily
expand or build upon your existing
plan, or did you find yourself creating
an entirely new plan?

TS: What overflow plans did you have
in place already?

Connor: We have a consistent plan

Connor: We've put into action one
of the features we built into Spruce
Hall, Indiana University's ACUHO-I
21st Century Project Residence Hall.
In design, we created multiple open
informal community spaces in each
residential wing. We are able to wall
them off and transform them into
student housing when overflow housing is expected. Each new room is then
connected with the same gender-designated community baths, which are
card accessed to specific rooms; in this
case, a bathroom assigned to 8 would
become a bathroom assigned to 10.
We were able to increase occupancy by
24 beds. The rooms are large enough
to expand to four beds per room (48
total student increase), and we would
inform students up front that they
would be the first to be assigned to
permanent rooms as no shows are
confirmed.

Frazee: We had already rented 605
off-campus beds in local apartment
complexes due to a higher than anticipated reapplication yield. We had a 49
percent reapplication rate for fall of
2018.
Gilmore: Our plan flows in this order:
temporary use of several guest apartments, temporary conversion of some
study rooms to residential space, and
temporary use of the second bed space
in RA rooms designed for double occupancy (the last resort).

were we can accommodate more than
250 students in temporary housing. Our approach is to furnish floor
lounges with the basic essentials of a
student room: a bed, a wardrobe, and
a desk, four students per lounge. The
lounges are switched (re-keyed or the
card access is changed) to have some
of the privacy of a student room. Some
floor lounges have enough square
footage to allow for six students per
lounge.

Frazee: We had to scramble during
the first two weeks of May and make
some tough decisions. We were not
able to secure anymore off-campus
spaces, so we made the decision to
limit graduate students and families
and convert family apartments to
house four first-year students each. We
ended up placing 650 first-year students in our family housing area. This
was a new plan for us, and we had
to contact furniture vendors, go into
overtime mode with staff, and make
adjustments on the fly.

Gilmore: Overflow is our standard
operating procedure, so our normal
plan was unaffected by higher numbers this year. Here is a little context:
No one is required to live on campus,
and campus housing is not guaranteed
to any group of students. We manage applications in such a way as to
intentionally occupy some temporary
housing spaces to ensure that we have
beds for everyone who shows up and
that we will be as close to 100 percent
occupancy once all the no-shows, late

cancellations, and early move outs
take place. We do this for two reasons
(in order of priority): One, since we
know the value of living on campus
for new students and because space
on campus is not guaranteed for all of
them, we want to provide the opportunity for as many students who want
campus housing as we can; and, two,
we know that we will have very late
cancellations, no-shows, and students
who move out during the fall semester.
Having students in temporary accommodations who can back-fill these
available spaces allows us to maintain
a higher average occupancy throughout the academic year.
TS: How did staff respond?

Connor: We keep key staff informed
throughout the summer that we might
need to move to transitioning floor
lounges to temporary housing. We try
to refine what numbers we need in the
later part of July after the IUB summer orientation/registration program
is complete and we have attempted to
triangulate the first-year class by admits, housing contracts, and fall class
registration completed/committed.

Frazee: Staff rose to the occasion:
To make this happen, we used 1,064
hours of overtime and spent nearly $1
million on new furniture for apartments that were previously unfurnished. We created a learning community based on strengths for this area
and planned to host Supplemental
Instruction in the community. We also
hired a full-time housing transition coordinator who helped field questions,
connect with worried parents, and
oversee anyone in temp space that was
later moved to a permanent room.

NOVEMBER + DECEMBER 2018

Talking Stick - November/December 2018

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