JOSHUA SILLS/Arizona Daily Wildcat Melanie Skievaski, Pre-Nursing sophomore examines an tin of Danish cookies while she moves into her new room at Gila Hall.

But waiting lists for housing are getting smaller

Approximately 300 students are breathing sighs of relief after late cancellations and no-shows have taken them off the Residence Life waiting list and into permanent housing.

Although most of those who were on the waiting list have been placed in one of the 5,500 permanent spaces, some are still living with resident assistants.

For those who are still sharing rooms with RAs, Director of Residence Life Jim Van Arsdel said he hopes to find them permanent housing in the next few weeks, anticipating that some new students will choose to move out and free up spaces.

About 300 of the nearly 8,000 housing applicants were placed on a waiting list after the May 1 application deadline. All of those students were offered housing before summer's end, Van Arsdel said.

Some of those students were assigned to temporary spaces at check-in with the expectation that no-shows and last minute cancellations would open up permanent residence hall spaces.

JOSHUA SILLS/Arizona Daily Wildcat UA President Peter Likins carries a computer monitor for a student moving into Villa del Puente last Thursday.

This is the second year that incoming freshmen have not been guaranteed on-campus housing. The first-come, first-serve policy was put in place last year following a serious residence hall shortage during the 2001-2002 school year.

"We were extremely full," Van Arsdel said. "That kind of crisis was inevitable."

Despite the lack of space, Residence Life was forced to put nearly 200 students up in hotels, study rooms and RA rooms because of a policy that guarantees housing to all incoming freshmen who applied before the May 1, 2001, deadline and all returning students who applied before the deadline in late February of that year.

Van Arsdel attributed part of the overcrowding problem to the increased size of the freshman class that year. In Fall 2001, the freshman class had about 600 more students than in the previous year.

To prevent overcrowding, Residence Life enacted a new policy limiting the number of returning

students and assigning freshmen housing on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Last year, only 1,000 non-freshmen were allowed to return to the residence halls as opposed to 1,400 the previous year, Van Arsdel said.

As a result of these changes, Residence Life actually had a surplus of rooms in the residence halls, an excess of nearly 250 spaces.

"I don't know that (the surplus) cost us much of anything," Van Arsdel said.

Residence Life offset the potential financial loss of a surplus by converting triple-capacity rooms in the Arizona-Sonora Residence Hall to double-capacity rooms.

Despite the problems Residence Life has had in the past few years, new students have said that the process has gone smoothly for them.

"It was pretty easy. I just applied and got my information back four weeks later," said Tyler Brearley, an undeclared freshman moving into Manzanita-Mohave.

Although the approximately 300 students on the waiting list were offered housing this year, incoming students are advised to send their applications in early to avoid the risks of a waiting list.

"Get everything done on time," said art history freshman Daniela Boos. "I got in right away because I got everything done on time and early."