Editor’s Note: This is the second article in a series investigating the effects of increasing enrollment at Saint Mary’s College.
While the average cost of college tuition continues to rise, room and board rates have risen faster, becoming not only the fastest in growth rate, but also one of the costliest factors in college expenses.
Saint Mary’s College is no exception to this challenge. Not only is the College expecting to enroll one of its biggest classes in history, the administration also faces the challenge of providing enough affordable housing for its students.
The cost of room and board places an additional burden on students when it comes to choosing their housing, on top of choosing specific sections, and even needing to navigate an entire building being closed off for incoming freshmen.
Juls White, director of Residence Life, told The Observer that beginning this year, freshmen have certain sections provided to them for every dorm on campus.
Base cost housing is the minimum total cost for room and board on campus.
At least 40.4% of base cost housing has been pre-allocated for incoming freshmen, a review of College housing data concluded. The percentage includes base-cost housing in three halls that do not provide exact statistics on pre-allocation for freshmen: Regina North Hall, Regina South Hall and Holy Cross Hall.
During her housing selection process, freshman Adamaris Cortes planned to choose a double in the Regina Halls. Cortes said she wanted to live in a double because the surcharges for a single are too expensive and she was told there wouldn’t be singles left for rising sophomores. However, when the time came to choose her room, there were no doubles left in either Regina Hall and very few remaining in Holy Cross Hall — causing her to take a single.
“Luckily I have a room, but I felt stressed because this made it a financial thing. Also, I was very disappointed, because why were there no rooms at all?” Cortes said.
She said many of her friends and classmates felt similarly and believed there was a lack of base-cost room availability by the time rising sophomores chose their rooms.
In Le Mans Hall, there are 109 base cost dorms out of 260 — 41.9% of rooms in the hall. Forty-eight of these are reserved for incoming freshmen, meaning 44% of base cost dorms are no longer available for sophomores, juniors or seniors.
Junior Emma Paris, who plans to live in a quad next year in Le Mans, chose base cost housing, as opposed to other senior-living options such as Opus Hall, due to the high surcharge rates in Opus and wanting to live with her friends. However, she said they felt frustrated at the lack of options available for her and her friends when choosing a room. There are 27 quads available in Le Mans, but only four were available for returning students.
While excited to be with her chosen roommates, Paris said they are “a little frustrated because we thought we were going to have more options to work with, and that wasn't the case.”
Paris said the quad-style rooms still available in Le Mans were considerably smaller and felt they were less desirable than the quads now sectioned off in the second, third and fourth annex hallways. In an effort to bring attention to their frustration with Residence Life, Paris and her roommates sent an email to White asking why such limitations were in place.
“We were trying to bring it to her attention that the room selection process is very limited, that there weren’t that many options left for us, at least in our specific housing situation,” Paris said.
The next highest number of base-cost dorms can be found at McCandless Hall. In McCandless, 72% of the dorms are base cost, most of these include sinks, but not full bathrooms in each room. The entire hall is designated for freshmen.
Base-cost housing options are also available in Holy Cross Hall (86%), Regina North (38%), Regina South (36%) and Annunciata (27%) also offer base-cost housing. Neither Lourdes Hall or Opus Halls offer any base cost dorms.
For freshman Sarah Couri, she initially wanted a triple in Holy Cross. However, due to all of the triples being taken up prior to her selection date on April 17, she had to find a new roommate to obtain a quad instead.
The lottery system to determine when a student could even access the housing portal caused concerns for her as well.
“If you have a good time, you’re set and if you don’t, then you might not get a room,” Couri said. “There has to be a better system.”
She said she felt the housing process as an incoming freshman was easier because of a higher guarantee to have housing than it is now, despite a requirement for Saint Mary’s students to live on campus for their first six semesters.
From Couri’s perspective, “it almost felt that there were no rooms left for the people that were actually enrolled at the school.”
