There has been a lot of discussion lately about Fall term housing, particularly among those who were wait-listed by the Office of Residential Life. It seems that there are too many '97s for our quaint campus to hold, so we are now faced with a housing shortage.
I find it odd that one year after we faced a housing problem resulting from too many enrolled '96s, we are now dealing with the same problem with '97s. Granted, it is impossible for the selection committee to know who will and will not accept invitations to attend Dartmouth, but one would think something could have been done to avoid a repetition of last year's housing crunch.
The increased number of freshmen, or first-year students if you like, is most likely part of the College's plan to increase the size of the student body. Whether that should or should not be done is a debate in itself, but it is a simple fact that Dartmouth lacks the room for more students. If you want more students, build new dorms so you have a place to put them.
The real problem with the large number of incoming students is that they are guaranteed housing while the rest of us are not. I have been told that there is no way ORL will be able to house all upperclassmen, and that makes for a rather difficult situation.
On one hand, you could look for an off-campus apartment and tell ORL what they can do with their wait list, but then you would have to go through the hassle of living even further away than the Lodge, thus requiring a motorized vehicle of some kind.
On the other hand, you could just wait for official word from ORL, hoping that you'll be shoved into a newly-made one room triple in the Choates, or maybe a two room quad in the River. However, if you don't get housing, all of the off-campus apartments will be taken.
So what do you do if you have no housing? Looking around campus, the obvious choice is a tent on the Green. During the fall and spring, this could be rather pleasant. Sure, there's no electricity (except for that magical outlet that appears during the bonfire or when the Christmas tree is up, where people plug in the radio or the tree lights, only to have it disappear again into the dwarven kingdom below the Green), but who really needs it?
I would like to think ORL will come through, and everyone will have a place to live. Even if they do, what will happen next year when there are even more '98s? It is disturbing that something as elementary to college life as a dorm room has the potential to grow into a major problem on this campus, and I hope something can be done about it before that happens. Just in case, though, I call the tent near the outlet on the Green.
