The wallets of those signed up to live in Grand Forest Apartments next year are going to be a little bit fatter than previously expected. After reading the article “New residence hall fees …” in last week’s The University News, Housing and Residence Life discovered that the published Grand Forest rates were incorrect, and revised the rates Monday morning. Although the rates are still an increase from this year’s rates-by anywhere from $74 to $484 per semester-they are far below what some of the erroneous housing rates originally indicated, that is, about a $1,000-$1,100 increase per semester.

“I regret that we made a posting error when we put the new rate sheet up on the University’s website, but I believe we have made the appropriate corrections,” said Vice President of Student Development Kent Porterfield in a prepared statement for The UNews.

Porterfield said that Student Development worked with Housing and Res. Life to consolidate the number of rooming rates to simplify and equalize rates (for example, a double in Walsh now costs the same as a double in Griesedieck). This, combined with the cost of Grand Forest summer renovations, is where some of the confusion with Grand Forest rates arose.

“We tried not to make the top end of the rate adjustments beyond reason,” he said.

Director of Housing and Res. Life Alvin Sturdivant presented the new rates and a rationale for them to the Residence Hall Association and Student Government Association’s Residential Affairs Committee in February.

The Chair of SGA’s Res. Affairs Committee, Kate Sliney, said that she had been taken aback upon hearing about the very large increases in Grand Forest last week.

Though her committee heard a presentation from Sturdivant about the new rates in February, she said that nothing in the rates seemed “particularly striking or unfair” at that time.

She attributed this to the fact that, because her committee was unaware of the topic of Sturdivant’s presentation, none of the committee’s members had the old rates on hand during the presentation.

Sliney also said that including meal plan values in the rates skewed the way they may appear at face value.

Sliney said that even if the high Grand Forest rates had been clear in the meeting, authority-wise, the most her committee could actually do in response was file a resolution against it in SGA.

“In reality, [passing a resolution] only goes so far,” she said. “I feel [Res. Affairs’] role is more connecting what’s going on in Res. Life to the students. … We are advocates, but the extent to which we can advocate is a slightly more limited role.”

Sliney added that her committee might consider looking into a different way of handling situations such as these in the future.

This year, her committee “took [Sturdivant’s] word for it,” she said. “We should’ve maybe done the checks to really make sure that Res. Life hasn’t made any errors along the way.”

As far as posting incorrect rates goes, Sliney said, “That’s Res. Life’s problem.”

Former SGA Grand Forest Sen. and current Res. Affairs Committee member Paul Lederer said that though there was evidence of larger increases in Grand Forest at the Res. Affairs Committee meeting, it seemed legitimate at the time.

“I just kind of took [the increase] as a formality, something where they were doing a large scale renovation, and the numbers just reflected that,” he said. He added that he thought that in the case of Grand Forest, students are paying the price for renovations that have been put off too long.

RHA President Meghna Nagabhushan also said that she didn’t realize just how high the increases were when Sturdivant presented them to RHA. She advised students not to “jump the gun” and assume the University is taking advantage of students, but rather, to communicate with SGA and RHA to voice their concerns.

SGA President Sam Howard said that though she had talked about a new system of rates with Porterfield, the first she seen of next year’s rates was from what was published in last week’s The UNews.

Howard said that she didn’t think that it would’ve made sense for her to ask Sliney for the numbers to double-check them herself.

“I don’t like to know secrets that I don’t need to know,” she said. “Housing is not a huge initiative for me or my [executive] board.”

Additional reporting done by Kelley Dunn, Adam Tamburin and Matt Wilhelm.