The off-campus housing lottery, which took place on Tuesday, Feb. 17, approved 58 rising seniors to live off campus for the 2015-16 school year. Including senior Febs who have been granted approval, the number of students permitted to live off campus next year amounts to 95—a slight decrease from this school year’s 106. This past week, administrators and faculty members involved in housing have been swamped by groups of students seeking answers as to why they were not granted approval.
The results of the off-campus lottery—a random selection process—came as a surprise to many: in the past, students who have applied for off-campus approval have had seemingly little trouble with the process. Recent bed shortages last winter term suggested the College is in the midst of a housing crisis.
“In terms of practicality, it doesn’t make sense to me why the numbers for off-campus have gone down,” Somers Brush ’16 said. “Coming back from abroad, I was put in a double within a suite in Hepburn with three people I didn’t know. This wasn’t an ideal way to start off after being gone for so long, and it makes me think that Middlebury has an on-campus housing shortage. Until that shortage is addressed, it seems that having the maximum amount of off-campus students would be beneficial not only for seniors, but for all students,” she concluded.
The waitlist for off-campus housing is extensive. In the days that followed the lottery, many waitlisted students approached Residental Systems Coordinator Karin Hall-Kolts searching for guidance and explanations. Hall-Kolts could explain only how the waitlist works, as general silence from Old Chapel prevented her from being able to give waitlisted students firm answers about their chances of living off campus.
Administrative silence last week contributed to an atmosphere of confusion and frustration, which has naturally given rise to many questions and theories regarding the situation. Earlier this year, Middlebury community members vocalized frustration about student partying off campus.
“This is the first year, in all the time that I’ve been here doing the work that I do, where we’ve had real issues with our neighbors, our neighbors who are close to campus,” said Special Assistant to the President Dave Donahue.
As the surprising outcomes of the lottery arrive in the wake of the town’s exasperation, many students speculate that the College is decreasing the number of students allowed off campus in an effort to mend a potentially damaged town-gown relationship.
Frustration abounds not just among students; the landlord of an off-campus house has expressed his concerns with the situation. One group of students who put deposits to rent his house in the fall of this year now faces a difficult challenge; some in the group were not approved to live off campus while others were granted permission. In an email to Hall-Kolts and Interim Dean of the College Katy Smith Abbott, this landlord, who has been a Middlebury town resident for 35 years, wrote to the administration pleading with them to reconsider.
He wrote, “How is it fair to ‘punish’ these students by changing the rules at this late date and based upon the problems of last fall when they weren’t even part of the problem? I’m talking of course about the students who committed to live at 325 and 341 Weybridge St. Each of these students was excited about their housing choice for their senior year. They had far more foresight and organizational acuity than most of their peers (at the beginning of their junior year agreeing on leases for their senior year) and each received outstanding references.”
This landlord’s email suggests that the decision to decrease the number of students living off campus is a result of the town-gown issues that ensued this past fall after a number of off-campus parties left many local residents angry.
“A logical response to the issues that we’ve had this fall would be to bring some students back on campus,” Donahue said. “In terms of town-gown relations, we’ve done more work this year trying to address the concerns of neighbors than we’ve done at any time that I can recall.”
However, while the decrease in off-campus spots may seem like a response to neighbors’ concerns, it is in fact an administrative attempt to simply lower the maximum number of students awarded off-campus spots, and this administrative movement “stands alone, separate from the issues we’ve had,” according to Donahue.
Associate Dean of Students Doug Adams further clarified the decision.
He said, “I think that there’s a perception that there was a drastic reduction in the number of students that were approved to live off campus. The reality is that the number was reduced by about ten for our lottery process. In the past, we’ve normally done about 95 students during the lottery process to approve to live off campus.”
The number of students allowed to live off campus is adjusted annually, depending on enrollment and campus housing needs. As a residential college, Middlebury assumes that most students will live on campus, and housing policy prioritizes filling as many beds on campus as possible. This year, the number of students allowed off-campus was reduced only slightly, but because over 100 people applied to live off-campus, the slight reduction seems much more dramatic to waitlisted students.
The approval numbers are further complicated by the number of senior Febs who are currently living off campus and who have chosen to stay off campus, as those Febs are accounted for in the number of students allowed to live off campus.
“This year, that was a much higher number than we’ve seen before: about 27 students. So we subtract that from the total number of students that we were expecting to take off campus, and we always do,” Adams said.
Ultimately, this year’s housing lottery has been complicated by a few factors with which most students were not familiar.
Adams continued, “We have a confluence of two things: we have a smaller number of slots that we can make available because we’ve had a larger number of students transferring through, and we slightly reduced the number of students that were in the mix by reducing the total number that we were shooting for by about ten.”
Despite what students may assume, the College has not chosen to change policies this year. Administrators are simply making housing adjustments that are standard procedure.
