About 100 students are making their homes in various hall lounges and the Holmes Student Center – and that’s the way Student Housing and Dining Services intended it.

At the start of the semester, some students were placed in temporary housing because of a lack of space in the residence halls. Most were paired off and placed in the floor lounges in Lincoln and Douglas halls while the rest stayed at the HSC Hotel.

Michael Coakley, executive director of Student Housing and Dining Services, explained that the temporary housing situation eventually works itself out.

“We always have a certain amount of no-shows and students who, after a few weeks, leave for whatever reason,” he said. “Having some people in temporary [housing] to fill up the vacancies keeps the cost down for everybody else.”

Coakley said the policy has been status quo.

“We have done it this way for the past couple years because demand exceeds the amount of space we have,” he said.

Residence Hall Association President Alex Underwood, a senior management major, understands the policy and supports it.

“I think it’s a good thing they overbook because it allows more students to live on campus,” he said. “Most of the students are placed by mid-semester anyway.”

Coakley tries to give the displaced students a choice.

“For the people in the floor lounges, if we have open spaces, we will offer them,” he said. “But having been there for a while, they have developed a relationship both with their roommates and the floor, and they may not want to move, so we won’t force them to move. But those in the Center have to be relocated by September.”

Tony Piper, a sophomore time arts major, was in that situation last year. He called the HSC “home” for the first few weeks of school.

“Community-wise, I suffered because there was no real place to hang out with people,” he said. “Room condition-wise, it was definitely better [in the temporary housing] because the rooms had bathrooms and were more spacious.”

Underwood sympathized for those who have to move twice.

“I think it gives the residence halls experience for more people, but it’s unfortunate for the people who feel misplaced,” he said.

The feelings of misplacement didn’t last for Piper.

“I was a tad upset [when I had to move out] because I don’t like adjustment, but, once I got to the dorms, I actually preferred it,” he said.

Coakley hopes the students make the best of it and realize it could be worse.

“Even though it’s not the best situation in the world for those students [in temporary housing], to say there would be no housing would be a worse situation,” he said.

About 1,000 students found themselves in that nightmare scenario. That’s the number of returning students who requested to return to the residence halls last spring and were denied because of the same over-crowding issue that led to the intentional over-booking.

“I think when we turned away the continuing residence students, we must have been their first choice and were unfortunately unable to accommodate them,” Coakley said. “What impact does that have on their ability to be successful this semester? I think it’s too soon to tell.”

Underwood thinks all this clamoring for space is just an indication of how positive the residence hall experience can be.

“That many people wanting to come back to the halls shows how awesome it is to live on campus, but I just wish they had more housing,” he said.