Towers to House Second Years in Fall

Residence Life and Housing (ResLife) will expand available sophomore housing options to Clairmont Tower for the 2015 to 2016 academic year, according to an April 5 email from ResLife.

The option will open up a “very limited number” of two-bedroom, four-person apartments in Clairmont Tower for rising sophomores, according to the email, and ResLife will give priority to groups of four students who sign up together. Sophomores can apply for housing in the Tower until today (Friday, April 10).

ResLife opened Clairmont Tower to rising sophomores to increase the flexibility of its current “consolidation process,” in which people currently occupying one bed in a double bedroom are asked to room with someone else to facilitate roommate requests, according to Andrea Trinklein, the assistant vice president and executive director of Residence Life and Housing.

Rising sophomores were initially given the options of selecting rooms at the Woodruff Residential Center or Harris, Few and Evans Halls. Clairmont Tower has been open to sophomores in previous years.

Trinklein declined to disclose the exact number of rising sophomores currently on the wait list for housing for next year, because she feared it might cause panic among the sophomores. However, she said that all rising sophomores will have on campus housing.

“The number of students on the wait list is similar to those of previous years,” Trinklein said.

The cost of living in the two-bedroom apartment is $260 more per semester than that of a double at any other residence hall currently designated for sophomore housing.

Between 20 and 30 sophomores who have already requested to live in Clairmont Tower are not on the wait list and already have reserved rooms on main campus for next semester, Trinklein said.

College freshman Cale Kennedy, who selected a Woodruff Residential Center suite for next year, said he welcomed the opportunity to live at Clairmont Tower and is considering moving.

“I hear that Clairmont has nicer facilities, and it, like Woodruff [Residential Center], is far from main campus anyway,” Kennedy said. “I would enjoy a change of scenery and to move away from the Emory bubble.”

Still, other students were less satisfied with the situation. College freshman Aisha Mahmood, who is currently on the wait list, wrote in an email to the Wheel that, while she wanted to live on campus, she applied to live in the Tower and was placed on the wait list.

“I am getting frustrated with [ResLife] about second year housing,” Mahmood wrote. “I was one of the first few people to fill out the housing application but somehow ended up being one of the kids to get waitlisted.”

Mahmood wrote that she was frustrated that housing for sophomores “filled up on the second day” and that ResLife took three weeks to respond to her housing situation.

Although there is a wait list for rising juniors and seniors who want to live on Clairmont Campus, Trinklein explained they are often less interested in the Tower and therefore will not be impacted by ResLife's decision to house sophomores there.

“The majority of [rising juniors and seniors] are looking for a different room type [from those of rising sophomores] and prefer a one-bedroom apartment,” Trinklein explained. “If they can’t get the specific room type, they won’t be interested in living on [Clairmont] Campus.”

Aileen Rivell, a College junior, said she is currently on the wait list for a four-person apartment at the Undergraduate Residential Center (URC).

Rivell agreed with Trinklein’s suggestion that rising juniors and seniors are not looking for the same room types as rising sophomores but expressed dissatisfaction with the uncertainty of her situation.

“If we get off the wait list and are put into the tower, we will decline it and look off campus,” Rivell wrote in an email to the Wheel. “But the delay in telling people whether or not they’ll get off the wait list is making it difficult to make other plans for housing next year.”

The change to make Complex freshmen housing and Evans Hall for sophomores and Greek life had little effect on the number of housing options available, as Trinklein said that Few and Evans Halls combined only have 20 fewer beds than the Complex has.

“The move was made to create a continuation of Eagle Row,” Trinklein said. “This is to accommodate smaller chapters who have a small critical mass and won’t have housing.”

College freshman Josh Bainnson, who expressed frustration that his suitemates all had late enrollment times, said he would like to see more openness in how housing and enrollment appointment times were given.

“I would like to see more transparency from the housing department and also OPUS about the processes behind assigning the times for housing and enrollment,” Bainnson said. “I would like to see the process on how time assignments are decided manually written down.”

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