Shane EvansStudents are anxious about the upcoming annual housing lottery. West Residence Hall, set to be ready in fall 2006, has been a main source of student concern. Many wonder if the building will be ready on schedule, and what will be done if it is not completed.
Because of the amount of freshmen accepted into the college this year and a lesser amount of beds available for other students, Cabrini was forced to find other ways to house its students. Next year, that problem will be one step closer to being solved with the new dormitory finished.
The set completion date for the new dorm is the upcoming summer of 2006, right before the move-in-time for students. West Residence Hall will house approximately 130 students, according to Howard Holden, the director of facilities.
The process for the housing lottery has also changed this year, due to the demand for the new residence hall. George Stroud, director of residence life, said, “We have a new way to determine housing for next year’s students. We will have a separate lottery about a week before the actual lottery for the Cabrini Apartment Complex. After those students find out whether they did or didn’t make it into the CAC, that will promote a new lottery.”
There is a slight twist for the better interest of the students for next year. Stroud said, “If students that want to live together don’t get moved into the CAC, they will have a choice of who they want to break up with and we can possibly move them into a house on the same floor altogether.”
If West Residence Hall is not ready for the students in the fall of 2006, Stroud believes that they will have to do something similar to what they are doing with Valley Forge for this year. “If we have a problem like that, we will just have to deal with it when it comes. There’s nothing more we can do.”
Concerns about the housing lottery come from those students who do not have cars to drive back and forth from class or money to move off campus. Some students feel no sympathy from the college regarding their situation. Kristen Longo, a junior education major, has every intention of coming back because she cannot commute from off-campus.
“I really don’t want to commute because I really can’t due to my own personal situation. I am looking to move into the apartments next year. I’m hoping I get in. Otherwise I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Longo said.
Sometimes Residence Life does make exceptions like they did for senior Diane Wizimirski.
Wizimirski described her situation, “I’m 23 and a senior here. I was commuting two hours three days a week for my classes and I really needed to live on campus. I am only taking two classes and to live on campus I need to be a full-time student, but they let me in because I found rooms that were open and I was persistent.”
Junior marketing major Caitlin Scott is in a similar situation to Wizmirski and Longo.
“I don’t know what I would do if I did not get housing, but I know I would be in trouble because I have no car to get back and forth to school, and I have no money and no interest to move off campus next year. Next year is my final year at Cabrini. Why would I move off now? It would be such a hassle for me to not be accepted into housing for not only me, but for my parents,” Scott said.
Another junior, who asked to have her name withheld, said, “I don’t know why Cabrini College has so many issues with housing. If they don’t have enough room for all of the students to move in on campus, then they should not have accepted so many freshmen this year.”
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Posted to the web by Shane Evans
