With 90 percent of freshmen students living on campus every year and approximately 3,400 undergraduates choosing to avoid the commute, the housing situation at Saint Louis University is always a topic of discussion. This year, the number of students living on-campus has increased to the point where the University is currently experiencing a housing overflow.
Overflow housing is a term for “students that are assigned to temporary SLU-owned housing facilities until space opens up in the freshman year residence halls, ” said Alvin Sturdivant, director of Housing and Residence Life.
Housing and Res Life has tended to the overflow by assigning all freshmen without a place to live to beds in the Manresa Center, as well as open rooms in upperclassman housing.
“It’s not a major problem, it’s just that some students applied late to the housing process-many them did so after SLU 101 sessions-which is why we have the overflow,” said Kent Porterfield, vice president of Student Development.
Porterfield said that the Manresa Center “is a very nice SLU-owned facility, that is a few blocks off campus and used for summer conferences, SLU retreats and for some guests.”
The Manresa Center currently has 34 bedrooms and approximately 55 beds, though Porterfield said that they currently had open beds in the building.
“It just needs a little bit of settling, we need to reassign beds to students who don’t show up to the campus and also late cancellations in dorms,” Porterfield said. “We can get everybody in and relocate them to a permanent facility, it will just take a bit of time,” Porterfield said.
In hopes of keeping these students safe, Porterfield said that the area is patrolled by SLU Department of Public Safety officers, and that transportation to campus is provided via SLU RIDE and shuttle services. The shuttle service runs from Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to noon and from 4 to 7 p.m.
“The food provided to the students in the various overflow housing facilities is the same as any other SLU student with Flex points and meal plans, as they can eat at any campus cafeteria or restaurant,” Porterfield said.
The only difference is students living in overflow housing are charged either daily or weekly with the lowest housing rates due to the inconvenience that is created.
However, due to the H1N1 cases on campus, students who were assigned to the Manresa Center are going to be moved to other housing options on campus as the center will be set up for student with to the H1N1 virus.
Megan Lovato, a junior living in Grand Forest Apartments, is one of the students affected by the housing situation.
Lovato said that on Friday, Aug. 28, she got an email at 11:15 a.m. from Housing and Res Life saying that they were moving in a freshman from Manresa into her apartment due to an “emergency.”
The freshman international student moved into the apartment the next morning, despite Lovato saying that they were not provided with an extra bed, and that the freshman moved in sooner than the 24 to 48 hour notice that Lovato and her roommate were promised.
“It is definitely an adjustment for all of us,” Lovato said. “We are not sure why the University would want to [require students to live on campus] when they can’t house everyone on campus.”
Lovato said that she will act upon her frustration, and will take action to prevent it from happening in the future.
“Being [a senator on the Student Government Association] now, I’m hoping we can do more,” Lovato said. “I want to have a student forum, and connect students and their issues with the staff at SLU. This is not to be ignored, because they will lose upperclassmen. It is overlooking the people that are already here, as it is a really unfair system.”
Sturdivant said that he is trying to address the overflow issue by trying to find alternate solutions for next year. He said that possible solutions might include working with enrollment management to build SLU’s own apartments on campus, master leasing with the apartments around campus or possibly blocking spaces in different apartments to create more space for students.
With the current state of the economy, however, Sturdivant said that he is unsure of when this possibility can become a reality.
“We are trying to balance the needs of both the freshman students who are new to the SLU community [with] the upperclassmen’s needs,” Sturdivant said. “This is not a flawless system, humans are involved and human error occurs. We’re just trying to take the best care, communicate effectively and find solutions for the situation.”
