The Board of Regents approved the construction of a new dorm to be completed by August 2016 to facilitate growing freshman class. In addition, an increase in housing will require an expansion of the dining hall.

Director of Housing and Dining Services Michael Mills said 93 freshmen had to live in the overflow housing in the Grove apartments last year due to a lack of space in the dorms.

“So this year the university is continuing to increase their marketing efforts and the freshman class is expected to be even larger. We’re projected to have a housing shortage of more than 200 students this next fall,” Mills said. “So we’re back in this Catch-22 of well we’re going to have all these new freshmen that want housing and we don’t have anywhere to put them. So how do we manage that?”

Because the new dorm is still two years from completion, Mills said all non-freshman residents of McCullough-Trigg are being asked to move out into the campus apartments.

“This is the first time we have not allowed McCullough-Trigg to be available to returning students, and to compensate for that we have added apartments at the Grove, Mustang Village, that are part of university housing,” Mills said. “If you don’t have 45 semester credit hours but you were thinking about moving off-campus, you can actually go live with us at Mustang Village, and that will count towards your housing residency requirements.”

Of course a plan as pivotal and immediate as making Trigg into the third freshman dorm has been met with resistance, but Mills said he won’t force students to move, so he said he wants to make it appealing for students open up space for freshmen in McCullough-Trigg.

“A couple of the negatives that we’ve heard from students are that the reason they choose McCullough-Trigg instead of a campus apartment is because of the cost, and that’s a very legitimate concern, one that we take very seriously,” Mills said. “You’re looking at just over $3,300 for your room and your meals at McCullough-Trigg. So if you want to move to Mustangs Village in the Grove, we wanted to make that appealing for you.”

Mills said the Grove is offering three-bedroom, three-bath units which the housing department will charge students $2,400 to rent, not including a meal plan.

“So automatically it’s cheaper than a campus apartment, and then we added in for the first time ever this fall we will have a five-meal plan that is available only to students in the apartments or commuter students,” Mills said. “You’ve got your own apartment, you’ve got your own private bedroom and you’ve got your own private bathroom. Then when you add in your five-meal plan, which would get you lunch every day in the cafeteria, it’s $700. So now you’re at $3,100 for your room and your meal plan, which is actually $200 cheaper than what you had a McCullough-Trigg.”

Mills said non-freshman students who want to stay in one of the freshman dorms will be able to appeal their case to a member of housing.

“If there’s a student that just, for whatever reason, this cannot work and they have to have McCullough Trigg or Pierce or Killingsworth, then we ask them to come talk with either Mary Keber, who is our room-assignment specialist in housing, myself or Angie Reay and let us see what we can do to accommodate them,” Mills said. “We don’t want it to come across that we’re punishing our returning students because that’s what we hope is not happening.”

Mark Campbell, resident adviser for Pierce Hall and senior in mass communication, said the plan may not be ideal for all students, but it is necessary until the new dorm becomes available.

“We’re in a sticky situation. We’ve got a bunch of freshmen coming in and we don’t have a place to put them because you can’t just put an incoming freshman in an apartment like the Grove and Sundance or Sunwatcher,” Campbell said. “It’s necessary that you put them in a freshman dorm. Opening up Trigg is a good idea. It just solidifies the fact that we need to build another co-ed sophomore dorm.”

Mills also said it is important to prioritize on-campus dorms for freshman rather than upperclassmen because freshman who start on campus are typically more successful in college, something he learned last year when 93 freshman had to live at the Grove.

“When you look at those 93 students at the Grove versus all the other students that started out at Pierce or Killingsworth, we retained a much larger percentage of students who started in Pierce or Killingsworth than we did students in the Grove,” Mills said. “More of those students left the university in the fall semester. That makes sense. You’re off-campus so it’s harder to feel connected.”

New dorm

While an architect for the new dorm won’t be selected until this August, Mills said he and other administrators want to build a steel and concrete structure that will last much longer than a cheaper wood-frame building.

“If your core is not concrete and steel, four floors is the highest you can go. We don’t want to put that in a central, core part of the campus that we hope will be permanent if 30 years from now we might be tearing it down,” Mills said. He added that the cost of a steel and concrete dorm may be too high, “So I think you might see some sort of blended structure.”

Mills said a blend of steel and wood will allow for a sturdier building, and cut down on the cost of construction.

“There’s got to be some level of blend because we don’t want to charge the student $4,000 a semester to live there because no one would pay it so we have to try and shrink back on the costs of construction,” Mills said. “There’s lots of universities now that are doing that. It’s not like we would be the only ones constructing that, but we’ll just have to see what comes back.”

Cafeteria expansion

Mills said Aramark’s contract expires August of 2015.

“They will have to rebid for our contract. The process takes a while,” Mills said. “Basically anyone can bid on the opportunity to have our food service contract next.”

Mills said an expansion of the current culinary offerings would be required anyway as the freshman class continues to grow and new dorms are constructed.

“If we build new housing, the current dining hall is not big enough so we’re looking at the possibility of converting the Daniel building,” Mills said. “It’ll start as the cafeteria, but I guess the hope is it’ll eventually become the student center, but that will have to pass.”

Mills said a new food contract would result in bigger changes than just a new menu.

“It will range from everything on what the cafeteria should look like, what your meal plan option should be, what type of retail options. I mean, they have to come up with everything,” Mills said. “We’ll review them in August/September, select the two or three finalists, invite them in for interviews, and they’ll go before the selection committee and then in November we’ll recommend to the Board of Regents.”

Mills said the committee has yet to be selected, but some students will be included in the committee to help represent the student body.

“Just like usual you’ll have obviously the director of housing and dining services, you’ll have a couple members of the administration, maybe a faculty member and some students that will all be a part of it,” Mills said.

Read the staff editorial: “Non-freshmen marginalized“