Before arriving on Fairfield’s campus, tripled freshman Annie Sikora thought adjusting to a new town, school and roommate would be hard enough.
Now she has the added difficulty of being in a forced triple, dealing with two new roomates and a very crowded room.
“It was a lot harder for me to adjust because being tripled was just one more thing to add to a new life. I was overwhelmed,” said Sikora.
She added, “I think we should be compensated for being tripled, whether it be through tuition or something else. It was the school’s fault for admitting too many students.”
But according to Dean of Residence Life Fran Koerting, Fairfield does not charge for housing based on square footage.
Single, double and triple rooms cost all students the same price. Sikora will simply have to remain on the waiting list to be detripled.
“I’m sure you have seen some small doubles, and some doubles that are relatively large,” said Koerting. “It would be difficult to make adjustments to the prices to accommodate for the rooms that are more crowded than others.”
The class of 2008 is so crowded that two study lounges in Jouges are being used this year as rooms. Before the class of 2004, lounges were only used for temporary housing.
“It usually works very smoothly, but these students will be placed in permanent assignments sooner than detripling others so that we can return the lounge space to the use of all residents,” said Koerting.
Residence life’s focus is to make sure all students receive the same services, such as attention from the RA programming, community building, Internet service and voicemail. Still, many freshmen and parents are upset.
“I just can’t imagine living in a lounge as a freshman,” said Caitlin Ledwith ’07. “I’m really glad I wasn’t tripled last year. It just would have been so much harder living with two new people and trying to fit all of our stuff into one little room.”
Sikora has experienced these same troubles and has similar feelings.
“My parents were upset because they are paying so much and I’m in the same size room as girls who are doubled,” she said. “My triple only has two armoires and we had to send a lot of our stuff back with our parents because we didn’t have enough room. I think most parents were upset.”
But according to Koerting, while some parents were upset when their sons and daughters received their tripled placement letters, there were relatively few who complained on move-in day.
This year, residence life has tried not to place freshmen in Kostka and Claver and make the dorms for sophomore and junior housing.
They have been able to accomplish that goal by implementing all-freshman dorms.
However, it does pose some limitations. One such constraint is that residence life cannot utilize any vacancies in Kostka and Claver for freshmen placements because it has been designated for upperclassmen housing “just as we were never able to place freshmen in townhouse or apartment spaces that occurred over the summer,” said Koerting.
For those unhappy freshmen in lounges and triples who desperately want out, you will be placed in open rooms on the quad as soon as they become available.
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