'Musical dorms' settles Old Campus housing

BRIAN CARP/YH In order to accomodate the Berkeley housing crunch, the University has to shuffle the housing arrangements on Old Campus.

Room draw is always a hectic time of year. But this year, Berkeley's demand for annex housing has disrupted Old Campus housing for seven colleges, sending ripples through the housing plans of all classes.

Next year, no freshmen will live in Durfee. In addition, most of the Class of 2003 will have very different living arrangements than their predecessors did.

The housing shuffle stems from the large number of rising Berkeley upperclassmen who have elected to live in the newly renovated college next year. According to Berkeley Dean Laurence Winnie, 98 percent of the Class of 2000 entered the room draw this year, compared to 60 percent of the Class of 1999 last year. "With the surge in seniors and juniors entering the room draw, I am certain we will have no problem filling Berkeley," Winnie said.

University officials found themselves in a quandary: how could they accommodate Berkeley's upper classes and still house the Class of 2002, which is required to live on campus? "We expected a rise, but we didn't consider that the rise would take the magnitude that it did," Yale College Dean Richard Brodhead, BR '68, GRD '72, said.

"[Berkeley] juniors thought they were going to be annexed because of Yale College's rule to keep sophomores on campus, and they didn't know how closely those rules were going to be followed," said Julie Rosenthal, BK '01, a Berkeley housing committee member. Since they lived in the Swing Space this year, Berkeley's Class of 2001 would thus have a maximum of only one year in their residential college.

To eliminate this possibility, the Yale College Housing Council, which Brodhead chairs, decided on Mon., Mar. 1, that rising Berkeley sophomores will be annexed in Durfee next year.

But the council's failure to communicate with the Morse Master left Morse College in the dark about this decision until Thurs., Mar. 4. In the recent past, Morse freshmen and annexed juniors have occupied all of Durfee as both freshman or junior annex housing. "On behalf of Morse College, I expressed my surprise to the central Dean's Office," Morse Master Stanton Wheeler said. "Over the next several days they rectified that problem with a
well-thought-through, rational
solution."

That solution has the incoming Morsels of the Class of 2003 relocating to Welch. Where Morse's overflow juniors will be annexed has yet to be determined. Whether or not Morse juniors will still get space on Old Campus, the annex townhouses at 90 and 94 York Square Pl. (next to Payne Whitney Gymnasium), which
each house six people, will
still belong to Morse.

The shift out of Durfee is certainly not the college's first choice, but Morse is willing to make things work. "We are team players, and we are willing to live with the settlement since all of Yale College will be strained," Wheeler said.

"There is no question that we are sorry to see Durfee go," Dan Wilderman, MC '00, said. "However, as long as I've been here, the combined work of people in Morse as well as the freshmen counselors have done a great job of integrating freshmen into Morse life. I have no reason to believe that this will change in another location on
Old Campus."

Dean of Administrative Affairs John Meeske and the deans whose colleges will be affected by the reshuffling met on Wed., Mar. 24, to finalize the rest of next year's freshmen housing changes (see graphic). Current students in Trumbull and Jonathan Edwards will also be affected by the loss of McClellan, as each college annexes 43 students there this year.

"We all recognized that there was a problem," JE Master Gary Haller said. "I was told that we would be losing McClellan over spring break, and Yale College has done its best to fix the situation. We had grown accustomed to McClellan being part of JE, but the rooms in Durfee are quite nice."

Meeske said that although the plans for annex housing have not been finalized, the tentative plan is to have Durfee entryway B become JE annex housing. Entryways A and C are slated to go to Trumbull, D and E to Berkeley. Morse juniors may or may not continue to live on the top floor of entryways A, C, and E.

For the first time, Yale has made it clear that each residential college must be completely filled to alleviate the burgeoning population of Old Campus. "We never made it that explicit in years past, but the residential colleges were told that they cannot fill their annex housing and have college housing left over," Meeske said.

Sid D'Souza, JE '00, a JE housing committee member, believes that a higher-than-expected number of seniors staying on campus next year will ensure that the college stays packed. "I think we'll have a problem getting everyone on campus," he said. "We may have to cap the upperclassmen."

In order to reduce its annex load, Trumbull has promised to fill up more than it has in the past. As a result, the college is already telling the Class of 2002 not to get too worked up. If the members of this class end up with the same size room next year as they had this year, they're promised priority in next year's room draw.

Meeske admits things may get difficult in the future if the surge in the number of students staying on campus in renovated colleges is sustained. "It is a problem, to be honest, that I wasn't expecting," he said.

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