Photo of the Residential Life office on the South 40 by Grace Bruton.

On-campus housing will be available to a limited number of juniors and seniors in the upcoming housing application.

Juniors and seniors will have options to select on-campus apartments in the spring, with more information about the bed count coming after the housing application closes on Friday, Feb. 10, Will Andrews, Director of Housing Operations for the Office of Residential Life, said.

However, he noted that “most juniors and seniors will live in off-campus apartments,” even with this change. Upperclass students with specific medical needs will be given priority for on-campus beds.

“Students with approved medical accommodations will be assigned housing based on their needs for [on-campus] and off-campus housing,” Andrews said.

According to Andrews, multiple factors go into the decision on whether or not to extend on-campus housing options to certain juniors and seniors.

“While first-year class size is important, we also have to look at the retention rates of the rising students,” he said. “Another factor that we look at is density, and as was the case this year, [an] ongoing construction project ended up removing 18 beds from our overall occupancy. In addition, we are required to have beds available for emergency situations.”

For the past few years, the COVID-19 pandemic has restricted the amount of on-campus beds available to students. 

Andrews said that there were 3,140 beds on the South 40 available to first-year students and upperclassmen during last year’s housing application. There were also 1,000 North Side beds available to upperclass students, fraternities, and Living Learning Communities (LLC), and 740 off-campus beds for upperclass students.

As of this article’s publication, Residential Life has not released the number of beds that will be available in the upcoming housing application. 

In terms of quarantine housing, Andrews said that there are currently no plans to set aside beds for quarantine next year because it is “too early” to make this decision. However, he added that if a plan should develop, it would likely consist of the same 40 beds from this year’s housing plan, all of which are located in the Millbrook apartments.

As for other features to the upcoming housing application, the University will continue to not offer triples as an option for first-year students, according to Andrews. 

“We won’t be utilizing triples for the upcoming year,” Andrews said. “Triples right now are being used as doubles.”

Andrews noted that some rising sophomores can expect to live in a double room next year.

“To live on campus, about 10 percent of [the Class of 2026] will have to live in doubles,” he said.

Students can expect to hear more details about the 2023-24 housing plans as the year progresses, including important dates and guidelines.

“[More] changes [to housing selection] are going to be announced soon,” Andrews said. “We want students to pay attention to deadlines…Our goal as always, but even more so this year, is to make students aware of what options they have.”