Residential Life is seeking to relieve some of the financial strain of the housing selection process by considering a standard housing rate to remove the difference between traditional and modern dorms.

Skyler Kessler | Student Life

Students walk between South 40 and Umrath Houses. Residential Life is considering a standard room rate for housing regardless of modern or traditional status, resulting in varied levels of dissatisfaction among students living on the South 40.

As the University begins its yearly talks on setting the prices of housing for the upcoming years, administrators and ResLife will talk about the move to a standard room rate.

Under the standard room rate, the University would charge solely based on the number of beds per room rather than the building style. If implemented, the standard rate would only be in effect on the South 40 for its first year.

Due to the Class of 2018’s large size, many current freshmen living in traditional buildings have been pushed to the Village and Lopata Houses for next year, where they will be paying several thousand dollars more than they are currently. Where a traditional triple on the South 40 costs around $7,000, a modern single in the Village costs around $12,000.

Associate Vice Chancellor for Students Rob Wild noted the difficulty the University would have in still providing cheaper on-campus housing options for students on financial aid. Although the University covers the full housing stipend for students in the lower income bracket, Wild is unsure how sensitive students without full housing stipends might be to the price.

“It would seem that in order to get to one common rate, you’d have to…average out the existing rates that we have, which when you do that, would mean that the less expensive rates would come up and the more expensive rate would come down,” Wild said. “There are reasons why you would not want to do that. You don’t want all of the sudden for people who are choosing to live in the less expensive [rooms], put them in a situation where they’re having to pay more. This is likely going to be the very crux of the discussion we are going to have about this.”

However, Wild noted that the housing change would address potential discrepancies between students that can afford to pay for expensive housing and those who had to live in traditionals or off-campus.

“Part of the reasons we have different room rates is we feel that the more expensive buildings, one could argue, have more amenities to offer,” Wild said. “The con with our current system is that it could potentially over time lead to a situation where students of lesser financially well-off backgrounds are living in the less expensive buildings and students that have more financial means are living in the more expensive buildings. That is not actually happening today for the most part on the South 40, but we worry that over time that’s something that could happen.”

The goal of the initiative moving forward, according to Wild, is to allow students to properly predict and allocate the right amount of money they need for housing over the course of their four years at the University.

“Some of this is just about trying to create less variability in the prices that we have more housing and getting more consistency in the prices that we have for housing,” Wild said.

Senior Nahuel Fefer, chair of admissions policy for Washington University for Undergraduate Socioeconomic Diversity (WU/FUSED), said this move, though it was not an effort to increase socioeconomic diversity, would help support current students trying to afford housing.

“It would reduce the socioeconomic segregation that massive price differential currently produces,” Fefer said.

He said that other universities nationwide have already pursued this initiative and that it would deal with the issue of students being forced into expensive housing by bad lottery numbers. However, Fefer noted that it would be necessary for the University to match the potential increase in prices with additional aid for low to middle-income students who might not have their housing fully covered.

“Unfortunately, this policy would also get rid of the most affordable options for low-income students, so I could only support it if it included an increase in the housing stipend proportional to the increase in cost as measured from the cheapest option available now to the flat rate,” Fefer said.

Freshman Haley Nichols, a resident of the Lee and Beaumont Residential College, believes that this change would not solve the current housing issue faced by students of varying socioeconomic backgrounds.

“They are trying to mend [the housing problem] by putting a Band-Aid over it when what they really need to change is the lottery system,” Nichols said. “I think that what they’re doing is a cop-out so that way they can say that they are fixing the issue, but the real issue is the way that they have the whole housing system set up, not the prices.”

She added that it would be unfair for students to have to pay the same price for very different living situations.

“Why should everyone pay the same thing?” Nichols said. “There’s a huge difference between ending up in Lee with a traditional bathroom to having a private bathroom. And the people that who can hardly afford traditionals, now you’re forcing them to pay more money to possibly end up in the exact same position all because you don’t like the stigma that’s attached to it.”

Director of Student Financial Services Mike Runiewicz was unavailable for comment.