According to Associate Director of Residence Life Kevin Hahn, the unexpectedly high number of first-year students enrolling in the fall 2014 semester resulted in 321 students being put into three-person rooms. Before Move-In Day, however, Residece Life was able to de-triple 51 rooms––153 students––bringing the number of tripled freshmen down to 168. The class of 2018 has over 100 more students enrolled than the class of 2017 did. Converted triples have been placed in Onondaga, Steuben and Niagara Halls.
Freshman Rosemary Carey currently resides in a tripled room in Niagara.
“I was already nervous about coming to college, so to have another obstacle in my way just made it all the more anxiety-provoking,” Carey said.
Hahn explained the reasoning behind choosing Onondaga, Niagara and Steuben to host tripled rooms.
“Students are tripled and that’s not good, but at least they are with other first-year students and that is typically what people want,” he said.
Although Residence Life is making an effort to de-triple students, the spaces left are not considered to be ideal for first-years.
“A lot of [the spaces] are in Allegany, Erie and Genesee, where there maybe aren’t a whole lot of first-year students,” Hahn said.
According to Hahn, students who are tripled for more than three weeks into the semester will be receiving a $187.50 discount.
“It’s not a lot of money but it’s something,” Hahn said. “If people are not de-tripled until after week nine of the semester, then they actually get another $187.50. So, [there is a] $375 refund that [students] could get off of their housing.”
Residence Life tripled students based on the order that they sent in their housing deposits.
“There are some concerns [from parents and students]; a lot of them revolve around people not necessarily knowing there was a relationship between housing deposit date and room status, so that’s also something we are going to try to communicate in multiple ways,” Hahn said. “That’s always been the process because there needs to be a way to determine priority and that’s what we’ve done historically.”
Carey said that even if notified, the opportunity to put down a housing deposit earlier would not have been possible.
“I wasn’t sure that I was going to go to Geneseo and there were a lot of different factors that interfered with my decision making, so it wouldn’t have crossed my mind to think about [the housing deposit],” she said.
Hahn explains that although he believes the situation is bleak, there are also many positives associated with living in a triple.
“Some of the positives to tripling are the great locations, meeting two potential connections and learning a lot of compromise and communication skills that can help later on in life as far as negotiating with other people––that is all heightened in triple rooms,” he said.
Although this wasn’t her ideal situation, Carey acknowledged that there are benefits to the living situation.
“I was expecting [the room] to be more cramped, actually. [Another benefit is that] you get to meet more people,” she said. “If one roommate doesn’t work out, you may like the other one.”
“I didn’t know what to expect because it’s been four or five years since we’ve had triples like this,” Hahn said “People have been great and super understanding for the most part.”