Overcrowding
Overbooked dorms struggle with unhoused residents
By Aaron Kokoruz
Staff Reporter

Freshman Sarah Wright moved into her dorm room last week with less enthusiasm than most freshmen after she learned she was assigned to live with a resident assistant.

“I feel like this won’t be a good situation because my resident assistant roommate is two years older than me and we cannot experience the same new things together,” Wright said. “Everything I am experiencing, she experienced two years ago.”

According to Residential Services, the fall semester is starting off with the dorms being overbooked.

“The overbooking of dorms is a normal thing we do, because every year we have a certain number of people who will call and cancel their rooms, and then there are always those people who just never show up,” said Roger Fisher, director of Residential Services.

Last Thursday there was an overbooking of about 50 students, but by Tuesday, that figure had shrunk to five students, Fisher said.

There is an on-campus living capacity of about 3,000 and right now there are an additional five men in lounges and all RAs have roommates, Fisher said. When dorms become overbooked, RAs are assigned roommates and certain lounges are set up as temporary dorm rooms, he said.

“I’m used to having a roommate so it’s not that big of a deal, but at the same time I was really looking forward to having my own room,” Jessica Green, a Moncrief Hall RA, said.

Evan Luck, a Foster Hall RA, said having a roommate interferes with his duties.

“Having a roommate severely inhibits my ability to perform as a resident assistant. It’s a concern of confidentiality and comfort for when a resident needs to come talk in private and my room isn’t really available to them,” Luck said.

In extreme overcrowding situations, such as two years ago, area motels are used as well to temporarily house the overflow of students. The overflow this year is nowhere near that level, Fisher said.

“There have been enough last minute cancellations to accommodate all female students in regular rooms and all but five men in regular rooms,” Fisher said. “Those five young men are in lounges in Moncrief and will probably be reassigned to regular rooms by the end of the week.”

The low overflow level this year will gradually fix itself as students move out of the dorms or leave TCU for various reasons, Fisher said.

Some of the lounges that are housing students may not even be used more than just a short time as more and more people either call to cancel their reservations or just don’t show up, he said.

All lounge rooms that may house students have been specially prepped with tables or desks, clothes rods, dressers and beds, Green said. Despite what some people think, living in a lounge does not mean living out in an open space or sacrificing privacy or safety, she said.

While the lounges may not have closets or sinks, they do have a lock, which is the most important part, Green said.

Fisher said students living in lounges have first priority to be reassigned over people living with resident assistants.

This means that some students living with RAs may indeed find their temporary living arrangements to be not-so-temporary.

Aaron Kokoruz