With the housing lottery just having passed, students are still confused regarding their room assignments. A change in the lottery system made the process of getting requested room and roommates more difficult, especially for the nearly 80 room-less students who have been put on a waiting list.

Michael Mills, director of housing and dining services, said reserving 50 percent of the available rooms made things more fair for residents of Pierce, Killingsworth and McCullough-Trigg who have the latest lottery times.

“We wish we could give everyone the room and the roommates that they wanted to live with, but we cannot realistically do that,” Mills said. “We don’t have enough space on campus for everyone but we are expanding. In the last 10 years we have doubled our number of beds on campus and are planning to add more with the completion of the new dorm in August 2016.”

The change prevented low priority students in the freshman dorms from being sent to Mustang Village without another option.

“The number of students is growing, and the university is doing what it can to accommodate that,” Mills said. “The university is just experiencing growing pains right now.”

Mustang Village

At Mustang Village, students have the option to lease with the university, or to lease under the apartment complex itself.

Lowell Nash, mass communication junior and community assistant at Mustang Village, said “Our rules aren’t as strict as the schools. There are no RAs, and you can have pets when living through us. The only setback is you have to get your electricity through someone else.”

Theses extra freedoms are what attract students like radiology freshman Alyssa Bell to lease through the apartment complex as opposed to the school.

“You can have a dog if you lease through the apartment complex, and you do get a lot more space at Mustang Village than on campus,” said Bell, who is re-signing a lease through the apartments for next school year.

Leasing through the school is a more popular option as 212 out of 504 available spaces of the complex are leased out by the school. And students like elementary education junior Phillip Coleman have come to like this housing option.

“I really like Mustang village. The only other place I’ve lived is Pierce Hall, so this is a huge step up,” Coleman said. “You have more freedom and room out here, and leasing through the school means that you don’t have to worry about a separate electricity payment.”

Mustang Village has a promotion now for people leasing through the complex where signing a lease or renewing a lease gets your name in a drawing to win a cruise for two. There have been two given away so far with three more to come.

Nash said, “for the cruise you have a choice of Mexico, the Bahamas or the Caribbean for five days and four nights.”

Nash also said while the cruise is a fun thing for people signing leases, it hasn’t really influenced more people to lease.

“The cruise sounds cool but it wouldn’t change my mind about leasing through the school,” Nash said. “I’m happy with my current living situation.”

This also wasn’t a deciding factor for students leasing through the apartments.

“I already knew I wanted to live here, so the cruise wasn’t a deciding factor, it was just an added bonus,” Bell said.

NUMBER OF BEDS ON CAMPUS

• 10 years ago: 700
• Now: 1,300
• Fall 2016: 1,800

* figures exclude 250 units that the university is renting at Mustang Village.