S. Alamedas only for grads

By David Wilson

The housing office announced last Wednesday that the Alameda South Apartments will exclusively house graduate students beginning next year.

The department held a presentation in Benson to explain its decision and to offer accommodations for displaced undergraduates who were planning on living in the apartments next year.

For some students, the meeting was the first time they had heard that Alameda South would not be available to them for next year.

"I understand their reasoning behind doing it, but it's just kind of an inconvenience," junior John Paul Vasicek said. "If we had known ahead of time we could have applied to other buildings like Casa or Sobrato but instead we got kind of shoved into Alameda North which is farther from campus."

Jane Barrantes, Director of Housing, explained that Alameda was facing a large number of vacancies before she made the decision to convert it to graduate housing.

"Out of 110 total spots, Alameda South only had 23 students coming back next year and 15 more wanted to move in, for a total of 38 preferring to live there next year," Barrentes said.

With so many vacant self-supporting units, which are funded by room revenue, the school would actually lose money if the apartments were not filled.

Twenty-six of the 38 students who were planning to live in Alameda South opted to relocate to Alameda North. The remaining 11 joined the various Residential Learning Communities (RLCs) and one student decided to leave on-campus housing.

This change comes about in part as a reaction to the university having an excess of undergraduate housing.

For a majority of the last 10 years, Santa Clara's on-campus housing had been filled above capacity to the point that students were assigned three to a room. But the decreased enrollment of last year's freshman class has left a record number of on-campus rooms empty, which means less housing revenue.

Last fall 280 additional beds were made available to undergraduate students, according to Vice Provost of Undergraduate Students Helen Moritz.

The additional beds came from the opening of the expanded Casa Italiana and changes to Sobrato Hall.

She also mentioned that the change is only a one-year commitment and if that if more residence hall space is needed to house undergraduate students in the future, it will be converted back to undergraduate housing.

The housing crunch may soon return to campus, however, and this is something Barrantes and Moritz are watching carefully.

This year's target of 1150 incoming freshmen has been met. This will mean that if the future freshman classes continue to grow larger, as they have in the past, the future of Alameda South could change.

It is likely that these apartments will eventually be needed for undergraduates as the population grows.

The graduate students who displace undergraduate students next year may someday be displaced themselves.

Barrantes concluded, "To be quite honest, I can't imagine our buildings continuing to house graduates because we'll need to provide for a growing population of undergraduates."

û Contact David Wilson at (408) 554-4546 or dfwilson@scu.edu.