While freshman class numbers have allowed for significant residence hall reorganization, a new early arrival system has increased the safety and organization of upperclassmen arrivals.
Freshman move-in day
According to John Stafford, director of Residence Life, this year's freshman move-in day went smoothly.
"The buildings were ready and looking good and there were no big issues," Stafford said.
"It was a bitch, but I thought it would be a lot worse," Lee Whitesell, freshman physics and philosophy major, said.
Several campus organizations, including Army Reserve Officer Training Corps. and Inter-Greek Council, volunteered their time to help the movers.
"All the people helping were very helpful," Matt Corbett, freshman law and justice major, said.
According to Stafford, "the economy finally caught up with us," because fewer freshmen chose to attend after their acceptance.
In response to this, several changes were made in both the freshmen residence halls and in off-campus transfer housing.
In Travers and Wolfe Halls, a significantly smaller overflow of freshmen has allowed Residence Life to re-open floor lounges.
In previous years, several of the floor lounges were converted into quads to accomodate the overflow.
Residence Life was able to open up half of the first floor of Travers to transfer students, making it half co-ed freshmen and half co-ed upper classmen transfers.
This split was possible because a sample group of upper classmen who previously lived on campus currently reside in the Pennington Rd. transfer houses.
According to Stafford, next year the incorporation of transfer students into the on-campus community will continue.
More Pennington Road transfer houses will be opened up to upperclass women who had previously been living on campus.
This option, available in cooperation with the Trenton State Corporation, will only be available to women because, according to Stafford, due to the gender differences between men and women, "women tend to be less damaging in smaller spaces."
The same percentage of housing will be left available on campus for transfer students who want to live there.
Early arrival procedure
Upper classmen who moved
back early did so under proce dures very different from those of previous years.
"The caliber of the rooms in August was not where we wanted it to be," Stafford said. "We wanted to raise the bar."
Reorganizing the early arrival schedule allowed Residence Life to close the buildings over the summer and provide facilities with more time in the rooms, according to Stafford.
This year's move-in schedule reduced the number of move-in days to seven, moved the check-in time to the afternoon instead of the evening and organized the check-in area for all upper-class residence halls into one place.
Unlike previous years, all early arrivals, with the exception of commuter athletes, were placed directly into their Fall 2003 housing assignments.
According to Stafford, this system makes it easier on both the students and facilities. Students no longer have to switch rooms at the end of the summer, and facilities only has to clean the rooms once.
"It was definately better," Lorraine Johnson, junior English elementary education major said. "There weren't many cars, so there was parking. Registration was pretty easy, you just had to pick up your key."
While all freshman buildings are on a normal lock schedule, upper class residence halls remained on a pre-opening locking schedule until Sunday, Aug. 24, for safety and liability reasons, according to Stafford.
"There hasn't really been any security besides swiping your card to get into your building, but at least there's that," Johnson said.
According to Stafford, aside from a few mechanical problems, the new system "has really worked."
