Tanna Kinnaman/DN
Jeniffer Schmidt, a junior biochemistry major, moves into her room on the seventh floor of Abel Hall Monday.
Residence halls feeling the crunch
By Doug Peters
Senior Editor
Three years ago, UNL housing administra
tors found themselves in a bad situation — too
many rooms, not enough students.
Today, they face the flip side of that dilemma
— where to put the increasing number of stu
dents who have flocked to the University of
Nebraska Lincoln’s residence halls.
The residence hall occupancy has been in
creasing steadily since the early 1990s, when the
halls were below capacity. This year’s increase
of about 550 students has taken administrators
by surprise and left them searching for solutions.
“If somebody a year ago would’ve told me,
we’d be 500 or 550 up this year, I’d have laughed
at them,” said Doug Zatechka, housing director.
But it happened. In fact, residence hall occu
pation has increased by more than 1,250 stu
dents in the last three vears.
The latest increase has put about400 students
in temporary rooms, Zatechka said. In addition,
all guest rooms have been eliminated, and about
200 upperclass students waiting for rooms may
have to find off-campus housing.
About 270 students have been assigned tem
porarily to triple rooms, Zatechka said, and
about 125 students will live in residence hall
lounges.
Students in lounges and triple rooms will be
given priority as rooms open up because of
cancellations or attrition, he said. Housing offi
cials estimate that 40 to 100 spots may open up
during the first week of classes because of no
shows.
Because additional spots will open through
out the fall semester as students leave school,
move into Greek houses or off-campus housing,
Zatechka said he hoped to have all students
placed in permanent rooms by the end of this
semester.
The housing crunch may inconvenience some
students, he said, but conditions for students in
temporary rooms would be comparable to those
for students in permanent rooms.
Almost one-third of all students who are
placed in triple rooms choose to stay there,
Zatechka said, even if other rooms open up.
Zatechka said students had been placed in
lounges at three different times during his 18
year tenure at UNL.
Triple rooms, he said, have been used every
year since he arrived at UNL.
Keeping the halls full has some obvious
drawbacks, he said. In the past, students could
make room changes with few problems.
This year, that will be different. Room chang
es will be difficult, if not impossible, at least for
a while. That, Zatechka said, is the biggest
problem facing students in the housing crunch.
What happens, for example, if enrollment
continues to swell?
“Somehow,” Zatechka said, “we’re going to
have to find more beds.”
One option would be reducing the number of
single rooms, which are popular with upperclass
and graduate students, Zatechka said. Another
would be to move up the application deadline for
upperclass students.
Both solutions would reduce the number ot
upperclass students in the residence halls, a
number housing has worked for three years to
increase. But freshmen are required to live on
campus, so upperclass students will be forced
off-campus if enrollment continues to increase.
He said now was not the time to make decisions
based on future enrollment predictions.
“We are not making any plans of what we
want to change, and what we don’t want to
change ... “ he said. “I want to do that in
conjunction with the students and the Residence
Hall Association.”
Despite the drawbacks, Zatechka said, full
residence halls actually benefit students. Full
residence halls mean lower room and board
rates. Students have consistently said low cost
was a major reason they chose to live in the halls,
he said.
UNL already has the lowest room and board
rates in the Big Eight, Zatechka said. Compared
to UNL’s peer group of institutions, rates are an
average of $1,400 less a year.
Despite the benefits, Zatechka said it could
be difficult to find a balance between reasonable
occupancy and reasonable rates —“especially if
the trends of rising occupancy and the popularity
of residence-hall living continue.
“I don’t think we’ll ever hit it perfectly,” he
said. “I don’t think any school ever does.”
UNL housing campaign
caters to upperclassmen
ay uoug Keiers
Senior Editor
A UNL housing campaign launched three
years ago to bring upperclassmen back to
campus has helped pack halls to capacity —
and beyond.
Though hundreds of students are in tem
porary rooms and hundreds more are on
waiting lists, housing administrators hold on
to their successful strategy.
In the residence hall world, says associate
housing director Glen Schumann, too many
is a heck of a lot better than too few.
Just three years ago, the flow of students
into the halls wasn’t even a trickle.
Administrators struggled to fill the halls to
keep room and board rates down.
Their solution was to bring older students
back to the halls through a large-scale adver
tising campaign, promises of low rates for
returning students and new services that cater
to upperclass students.
It worked.
Nearly a inira or mis year s :>ou-siuuem
occupancy increase is a result of upperclass
students returning to the halls. Many more
were turned away or put on waiting lists.
This turnaround has pleased administra
tors, but it hasn’t necessarily surprised them.
Faced with a steady exodus of students in
the early 1990s, administrators were forced
to re-evaluate die way the residence halls
operated. They gathered student inputs and
addressed the wants and needs of their cus
tomers, Schumann said.
By conducting satisfaction surveys, hold
ing open forums and having informal talks
with students, officials found that cost, priva
cy and convenience were the main factors in
bringing older students back to the halls, he
said. Schumann added that cost had been the
most important of those factors.
Administrators then launched a promo
tion asking students to return to the halls and
promising to keep rates down.
“In the past three years, so long as you live
with us continuously,” Schumann said, “your
charges won’t go up unless brand new servic
es are introduced.”
New services, such as rooms being wired
for Internet access, have increased the costs,
he said, but only by small amounts. In other
words, students who have lived in the resi
dence halls since 1992-93 are paying for
room and board based on 3-year-old rates.
In addition to holding down costs, housing
officials developed upperclass halls in the
Cather-Pound complex. All the rooms in the
complex were turned into single rooms be
cause privacy was a big concern for older
students, Schumann said.
Housing omciais aiso took steps to maKe
residence hall living more convenient for
students, he said. Cafeteria hours were ad
justed, Schumann said. “Grab-and-go” break
fasts were made available and some smoke
free floors were established.
The recent influx of students into the
residence halls may require some changes in
the way the halls operate, Schumann said, but
housing will continue to cater to the wants ~T
and needs of the students.
“We need to fine tune our program every
year,” he said.
Without fine tuning, Schumann said, past
problems will return.
“We learned something the hard way. We
were in a downward spiral. We don’t want
that to happen again.”
