Throughout the beginning of the fall semester, over 117 students have been moved into the FairBridge Inn due to a large number of housing applications from first-year students. Many were under the impression by Housing and Residence Life that they would be moved into the dorms at the University of Idaho by the end of September. However, 26 male students were moved into a fraternity as a permanent solution.
Housing and Residence had a plan to move all of the students to the dorms once they reached 3% “melt,” or 60 students that drop from the dorms. Since then, there have been many more students that have gone through the FairBridge.
“If you’re getting a melt number from enrollment, as it was on (Aug.) 17, versus if you took them out right now, it’d be completely different,” John Kosh, director of auxiliary services, said.
The new melt number is higher, with 120 students withdrawing from housing. Still, some of the 117 students originally from the FairBridge have yet to be placed.
As of Sept. 20, eight students remained at the FairBridge, while 26 students have been moved into Sigma Alpha Epsilon.
SAE previously had their chapter removed from the university, returning with several fraternity members this year. Now, about five of the fraternity members are sharing the building with 26 students who had hopes of getting into the dorms.
Recently moving from FairBridge, freshman Brian Cervantes now lives in the fraternity house.
“At first, they said everyone would be moved into a residence hall by the end of September,” Cervantes said. “I assumed they tried to speed it up, so they put everyone in here (SAE) because I don’t think there were enough rooms available quick enough.”
Cervantes said they were given the option to apply again for the residence halls if students still wanted to wait for a dorm room to open up.
However, one of the issues many students faced was the lack of communication from the university. For Cervantes, trying to find out if he got housing was a struggle.
“I was emailing and calling, and they weren’t really telling me anything,” Cervantes said. “I think one of the emails said like August 5 is when we would find out, and then we didn’t find out. It was a week before school started.”
This lack of communication has continued throughout the past month, with Cervantes not having a direct contact from the university to speak to. The most information Cervantes has received has been in the form of weekly email updates. Overall, Cervantes was confused.
“I honestly have no idea what we’re doing. Like, they do communicate once a week, but it’s not interpersonal communication,” he said. “It’s like a mass email sent to everybody. But honestly, I don’t know what they’re planning.”
Cervantes said, based on previous Housing communications, he was led to believe that there have been 50 students in overflow housing in total. When he heard around 30 students were being moved into SAE, while more remained at the hotel and some were moved into dorms, he realized the numbers weren’t adding up.
“They said there was 50 when we went to our floor meeting, but I was like, ‘that’s not (right),’” Cervantes said.
He was surprised to learn that the number of students in overflow was closer to 100.
While living at the hotel, and now at the fraternity, students have been paying the equivalent of a double Tower room, $2,304 a semester.
“We’re just not getting the exact same experience, but we’re paying the same price,” Cervantes said.
As for Cervantes, he hopes to join the residence halls soon but does not know when that would be possible.
“I feel like the people who sign up for frats, they know what they’re getting into,” he said. “But we didn’t, because I didn’t even know we’re moving into a frat until Tuesday (less than a week ago).”
He is unsure as to what the semester will hold, knowing that switching rooms within the residence halls themselves has been difficult.
“They’ve been very stingy on people moving around just because they did have an overflow,” Cervantes said. “I do have some friends who wanted roommate exchange applications…They were told they’re on the waitlist or they’re not able to.”
Students at the FairBridge largely consisted of residents who applied late during the summer. While some students may have forgotten to fill out housing applications, others had to apply late due to scholarships.
“I was planning on going to college in Arizona actually for the whole summer,” freshman Melanie Acevedo said. “Then the University of Idaho offered me really good scholarships, so I decided at the last minute to come here.”
Amanda Carrizo, an international student, was in a similar situation— she wanted to go to UI. The reason she applied late was due to scholarships that she only received the week before classes began.
Carrizo and Acevedo were moved into the dorms on Aug. 31, being in the first group to leave the hotel.
While most of the students are out of the hotel, the students’ stay at SAE is intended to last until the end of the semester, and potentially for the whole year. It will be up to students to apply to switch to the dorms. Students who have been moved into SAE the past month would have to apply again if they want to be considered for a dorm this semester, an email for Housing and Residence Life said.
While this is the plan from Housing, the students at SAE were unclear about the application process. Chris Brown, Jordan Lemon and Malaki Herby are friends that met at the hotel.
“I didn’t know that,” Brown said about the application. “Like, are we going to stay here for the rest of the semester?”
Lemon was the only one of the three who was able to find housing, while Brown and Herby remained at SAE.
Herby’s understanding was that living in SAE would only be temporary, but he is okay with the situation.
“I honestly don’t mind. This was actually a cool experience,” Herby said.
To mitigate the issue, Housing has been looking into limiting the number of single rooms. According to Kosh, they may consider making some suites in Wallace for four residents instead of two in anticipation for the next academic year.
While Kosh believed Housing had been communicating well with students. Cervantes and other residents said otherwise.
“If they felt that they moved in and did not have fair notice or fair understanding that they were going to the FairBridge, there needs to be some type of better communication,” Kosh said.
Housing and Residence Life denied requests for an interview.
Daniel V. Ramirez and Haadiya Tariq can be reached at [email protected]