The Office of Residential and Community Development was informed that the apartments on Metzger Drive will not be finished for Fall 2005. As a result, students will not be able to sign up to live in the buildings during housing signups for next semester.
Because all the students who were assigned to rooms in the apartments have been guaranteed housing for next year, many upperclassmen are also concerned about their ability to receive housing. Mary-Elaine Perry, vice president of Student Life, said that this does decrease each upperclassman's chance of getting housing through the lottery.
Last year, students were able to sign up for the unfinished apartments, but then they were moved into other campus housing when the project fell behind schedule.
Also, according to a recent article in The Times of Trenton, one of the apartment buildings may be torn down due to "extensive water damage."
By not allowing students to sign up for the apartments, the Office of Residential and Community Development hopes to eliminate some of the confusion of this year's housing.
There will be more housing assignment changes incurred by a shuffling around of the residence halls in which each class of students is eligible to live. Currently, juniors and seniors are to live in Eickhoff Hall, the three townhouse complexes and part of New Residence Hall.
Sophomores will be able to choose from Decker, Norsworthy, Allen, Ely, Brewster and Centennial Halls and possibly part of New Residence Hall. Freshmen will remain in Travers, Wolfe and Cromwell Halls.
"Over the years we've had a growing number of students with special needs," Perry said.
"A lot of time we've had the freshman class living in Travers, Wolfe and Norsworthy and four first-year students living in NewRes or Eickhoff or something like that to accommodate. With using Cromwell we were able to accommodate those needs of most, if not all, of our special needs students right with their class. That was a nice thing to have, so we're going to continue to use Cromwell for freshmen."
Perry also said the plan to build new freshman residence halls after the completion of the apartments has been tabled. The design called for the destruction of Centennial and Norsworthy Halls with two large freshman residence halls in their places.
"When we looked at it from a very practical sense, we realized that in reality they weren't going to be as attractive as we thought on paper," Perry said. "We stopped looking at that design as such."
"We know we're not going to have them," Perry said. "They don't exist as housing assignments as far as the next year is concerned."
"If you were supposed to live in the apartments, and I was living in Townhouses, my chances of getting a room on campus as a senior diminish because you are guaranteed," Perry said.
"If any of us manage to get housing due to the high number of to-be seniors guaranteed housing, the housing options are great," Stephen Gifford, sophomore chemistry secondary education major, said.
"Wishful thinking on my part for getting NewRes," Jamie DeSantis, freshman history secondary education major, also coveting the New Residence Hall rooms, said. "ABE (Allen, Ely and Brewster Halls) and Decker don't sound so bad, but I've never seen Norsworthy and Centennial sounds creepy."
