Many of the 125 rising sophomores currently on the waitlist for housing will start getting rooms next week. But while they have been waiting for housing assignments, some students found out earlier this week that the rooms that they had already secured for next year are no longer available.
Current sophomores have until Monday to inform the university about their study abroad plans; after that, the rooms of students who have recently decided that they won't be on campus next year can be distributed to the rising sophomores who are on the waitlist.
"That's where the bulk of the openings come from," Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman said of the rooms that become available after students decide to go abroad.
Immediately after the lottery, Director of Residential Life and Learning Yolanda King told the Daily that she estimated slightly over 100 rising sophomores were on the waitlist. The final tally, which included students that did not show up for the lottery, was 180. Since then, around 55 of them have been removed because they will either not be returning to Tufts or have decided to commute, become an RA, live in a fraternity or sorority or pursue other related options, according to King.
A waitlist of this size is not unprecedented, but last year only 50 students were waitlisted, King said. "There is no significant reason why the rising sophomore waitlist is bigger this year," she said in an e-mail.
During this year's lottery, no singles were available for rising sophomores, but some of them who had high numbers and selected doubles will get first choice on the singles that become available, King said.
According to Reitman, students whose roommates move into singles will then have the option to change their living assignments to live with friends who are in a similar situation. This will leave more full doubles so that students on the waitlist can live with their preferred roommates.
While all rising sophomores are still guaranteed housing, King said that it is unclear whether they will all get rooms by the end of the academic year or if some assignments will have to be made over the summer.
But while some students will be taken off of the waitlist, a few others may have been added.
During the beginning of the semester, the university fire marshal conducted inspections and noticed that several woodframe houses were not in compliance with a safety code because in some areas they only had one possible way for students to exit in case of a fire, according to Reitman.
As a temporary solution, he said that devices were placed on selected rooms' doors that allowed students to get into those rooms without a key. In the case of a fire, they would be able to use the windows in the room to reach a fire escape.
He said that students who had these devices placed on their doors were often unhappy with the lack of privacy and that beds and other pieces of furniture in the rooms did not allow for easy access to the window. "It's not a permanent fix," he said.
As a result, 23 rooms in 13 houses will not be given out next year and will likely be converted into lounges with easy access to fire escapes. Many of the rooms are in culture houses. Reitman said that around 18 of the rooms were never assigned to students for next year due to the violations, but that five were and had to be taken back from those who had signed up for them.
Up until Monday when she received an e-mail saying that her room was going to be converted into a fire escape, sophomore Maya Brakhman had been planning on living in the Russian House. "It was definitely [a] stressful experience the week before classes ended," Brakhman said of finding out that she would have to look for another room.
Sophomore Jenny Gerson was supposed to live in the Crafts House, but had the same experience. While she said that she has been guaranteed a room on campus, she has not found one yet. "Right now I'm planning on getting a house off campus," she said.
All students in their situation have been given "an adjustment to their future lottery numbers," King said.
Currently, it is unclear how long these 23 rooms will remain unoccupied. "They'll be offline as long as they don't meet code," Dean of Student Services Paul Stanton said.
No plans are underway as of yet to open them back up to students, but Reitman said that one solution would be to build windows into the walls of the houses, giving students a secondary means of exiting the buildings in the case of a fire.
While the five rooming assignments that hade to be taken back were not given out by the ORLL, Reitman said that he is surprised that nobody - either the people in charge of the specific houses or the ORLL - got in touch with the students living in the rooms until Monday. "ORLL was dealing with these a month ago," he said.
But up until recently, "we were waiting for a final decision on whether or not we could continue to use these rooms or not," King said.
