Universities wrestle with limited living space for students

Hear that echo?

It's the sound of the second baby boom hitting the halls of ivy.

All over the country this fall, dormitories are filled to bursting as record numbers of freshmen, the so-called "baby boom echo," pour onto campuses. At the University of Washington, some students will be living three to a room. At Seattle University, a few students will sleep in converted study halls or communal kitchens until rooms become available.

So how are the boomlet babies - many of whom have never shared a room at home - going to take to communal living?

"Hey, I've never been one to fear new experiences," freshman John Cherek said gamely as he unloaded his gear last week in a Seattle University dorm room he'll share with two other men. "I'm sure it's gonna be fun."

Cherek, 19, a psychology major from White Bear Lake, Minn., has three sisters, so he's never had to share living quarters. Now he'll have to figure out how to stuff himself and all his gear - boxes and boxes of it, including a pair of mammoth stereo speakers - into one-third of a room smaller than some suburban bathrooms.

The room measures 240 square feet, meaning each roommate is entitled to 80 square feet - which is, coincidentally, the minimum space the American Correctional Society recommends for prison inmates.

There are three desks, but one of them is under a bunk bed. Cherek, a tall lad, quickly claims one of the others.

By the time the last of the boxes came up from his parents van, Cherek was beginning to look a little dubious.

"It does look like a lot of stuff, doesn't it?" he mused.

Seattle University is enjoying record freshman enrollment - about 670 students began classes last week - but that's a blip beside the 5,000 first-year students expected at the UW, where classes begin this week.

To absorb the flood, 190 rooms in the university's Terry, Lander and McCarty halls have been redesigned to hold three students each, said Paul Brown, UW director of housing and food services.

"What we've done is put in two bunk beds and a third `lofted bed,' which leaves floor space underneath for a desk or other things," said Brown.

The university does not require freshmen to live on campus, but most prefer the dorms. Also, more returning students are opting for dorm rooms - almost 60 percent this year, Brown said, compared to 50 percent in previous years. That's a striking reversal from the attitudes of their parents, most of whom couldn't wait to get out of the dorms.

There are a couple of reasons for that, said Brown.

"One is that we have made dorm living more attractive, with lots of amenities - for instance, all of our dorms except one now have direct Ethernet connections to the Internet. "And the other is that renting off campus in Seattle is not inexpensive anymore."

UW students pay $2,799 an academic year for a double room - or a little more than $300 a month. (Students in triple rooms get a 20 percent price break.) Rentals off campus range from $650 to $800 a month for a single room.

Colleges have kept competitive by throwing in free utilities. At Seattle Pacific University, for instance, telephone, cable and "one-port-per-pillow" Internet connections are all included in the room rent.

Then too, dorm living is no longer the severe regimen boomer parents shudder to remember. Co-ed dorms are so common they no longer even raise eyebrows. At many schools, students can choose a "residential community" to suit their lifestyles.

"We have co-ed floors, all-women floors, all-male floors, no-smoking floors, 24-hour quiet floors - we try to give the students their choice," said Judy Sharpe, director for residential life at Seattle University. There are also clusters of rooms for students who share the same academic interests - Spanish or French language students, for instance - there's even one for philosophy majors.

At the UW, there is a "non-substance-abuse" floor, according to Brown, and a floor for people who enjoy outdoor sports, among other interests.

Nationwide demand for dormitory space is expected to remain high for the next several years, peaking in about 2008, said Gary Schwarzenmueller, executive director of the National Association of College Housing Officials.

"The one good thing about this business is that you get 18 years advance warning," he joked. "All you have to do is follow the birth statistics."

Other than that, he confessed, "it's not a real good science. You never know how many freshman you're going to have until they actually show up. You get a bigger-than-expected freshman class, and suddenly it's panic time."

Schools all across the country are wrestling with the problem, he said. Georgia Tech had to allocate dorm rooms by lottery - even after adding 2,500 beds built for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

"I'm hearing many, many anecdotes about severe overcrowding and terrific demand," Schwazenmueller said. "This is not a blip. It's going to go on. In places such as California, Texas and Florida, they're going to be building for years."

Whitman College in Walla Walla, overcrowded for the past five years, has taken the drastic step of reducing admissions.

"We're committed to a quality living experience for our students," said John Bogly, dean of admissions. "When we're putting beds in the student lounges, that's not a quality experience."

This year, Whitman will enroll just 387 freshmen, winnowed from among more than 2,000 applicants. For the first time in five years, freshmen will not have to triple up in the residence halls.

Western Washington University in Bellingham, however, had no such luxury.

Expecting a record freshman class of 2,500 students, WWU has converted 160 larger dorm rooms into triples.

"I have been doing a little wordsmithing and saying we are at `maximum occupancy,' " said Kay Rich, director of residences. "Everyone who wants a dorm room will get one, although we still have the carpenters working on furniture."

As at the UW, Western freshmen aren't required to live on campus, but 90 percent do. And a larger number of upperclassmen are coming back to the dorms this year, said Rich.

"We have no fraternities and sororities here, so the social life in the residence halls is really important," she said.

Fast footwork helped Seattle Pacific University avoid a housing shortage for the first time in four years, said Jim Korner, executive director of university services. SPU will house 1,500 students this year, about 250 of them in triple rooms and a few in converted lounges.

After four years of shortages, SPU decided to "manage the demand," said Korner. The school had allowed only seniors to live off campus; that was changed to junior year or age 20. Each student was assigned a priority for housing - freshman and sophomores got the highest - and there were strict signup deadlines.

"Our students had grown to view campus housing as an entitlement," said Korner. "We had to change that culture."

SPU's freshman class has remained stable over the past four years, Korner said, but the number of returning students has grown by 5 to 8 percent each year. A new residence hall set to open in 2001 will add 136 new beds.

Tacoma's Pacific Lutheran University also dodged the bullet. PLU, with about 1,600 dorm residents, has just opened a new apartment-style residence hall that will house 230 upperclassmen in 4- and 5-bedroom townhouses.

"It's already full," said Tom Hilsbeck, PLU's director of residential life. About half of all PLU students live on campus, and the residence halls are at "comfortable" capacity, he said.

In his tripled-up dorm room at Seattle U., John Cherek is surveying his unpacked gear with satisfaction. By using every bit of shelf space - including one shelf that runs along the top of the window, just below the ceiling - he's managed to stow just about everything in his allocated 80 square feet. Even the stereo speakers fit neatly on either side of the wardrobe.

And he's had luck in his draw of roommates.

Curt Kiepprien, a fellow freshman from Idaho, traveled light.

"I drove here from Idaho with my best friend in a really small car, so all I brought with me were my clothes, a blanket and my laptop," he said.

James Shim, the third roommate, turns out to be a veteran of boarding schools. He packed his gear away so trimly the other two hardly noticed when he arrived.

"It's going to be a little tight, but not as bad as I thought it would be," said Kiepprien.

Besides, notes Cherek, there's already a rumor of no-shows on the floor, so one of them may get to move into a double.

We could end up with two guys in a big room," he said.