Single Room Fee Raised
Ada Lambert | September 20, 2023
On Sept. 1, an email was sent out by Sandra Hall, director of Housing and Residence Life, notifying Warren Wilson College (WWC) students about the room consolidation process. Due to the lack of available rooms on campus, the housing department decided that any student who is without a roommate would either have to find one or pay an extra 2500 dollars per semester to keep their single room.
“We are so limited on space this semester,” Hall said. “In the past, we've had spaces where people can stay roommate ready, and leave their space open. This year, we are very tight on space.”
Part of the housing limitations has to do with the three dorm buildings that are currently out-of-order: Villages A, Villages B, and Shepherd. There are no set dates on when they will reopen, but the goal is to have them listed on housing applications for the 2024-2025 school year.
“When Villages and Shepherd reopen, it will give us a little bit of breathing room to kind of move out a little bit more,” Hall said. “But on top of that, I mean we're constantly as a school trying to grow admissions and you know, retention and trying to keep students on campus. And so we need those spaces in order to bring in more students.”
Apart from limited space, Hall notes that this process is something that WWC implemented pre-pandemic and is a standard amongst other colleges.
“Consolidation is something that every housing department across the nation does and normally it's an every-year process, but [the pandemic] made changes to everybody's processes, because we couldn’t consolidate people who had to be in rooms by themselves in the beginning of [the pandemic]” Hall said. “So we're kind of moving past covid now— back into normal processes. None of our students who are on campus right now have experienced the pre-covid policies.”
Last semester, there was a large number of students who did not receive medical singles (now called housing accommodations) for the fall, some of whom continued a process with the board to advocate for their needs. Some of those students were granted their accommodation later in the summer, but with the tight space on campus, not all of them have been moved into a single space yet.
“I have people who are approved for housing accommodations and I don't have a room to put them in, so I'm having to consolidate people,” Hall said. “We started the consolidation process back in late June, early July. Anybody that was here over the summer, or as soon as I found out people's roommates weren't returning, I was in constant contact with those students via email, because a lot weren't here on campus.”
Room consolidation will continue until all spaces are accounted for. Students will be able to request a single room for the additional 2500 dollars a semester as spaces continue to open during this process.
For any questions, contact shall@warren-wilson.edu