Construction Keeps Upperclassmen South

As this year's new recontracting process draws to a close Friday, Rick Bradley, assistant director of the Department of Housing and Residential Education, said next year's renovations in Connor, Winston and Alexander residence halls mean a loss of 445 beds on North Campus. But the opening of four new South Campus residence halls will compensate by adding 950 beds.

Overall, that keeps more students in South Campus housing -- including some rising juniors -- but housing officials say they've tried to make this year's housing recontracting process as fair as possible.

Bradley said that during recontracting, students living on South Campus during the construction of the past two years have received priority for the new residence halls. All other considerations for recontracting on campus relied solely on class standing, he said.

Housing director Christopher Payne said an increasingly high demand for campus housing in recent years also has made it more difficult for South Campus residents to recontract for North or Mid Campus rooms.

Payne said this trend has forced the housing department to retool the recontracting process.

This year the recontracting process was done on a first-come, first-serve basis.

The first phase, which allowed students to request their current room for next year, occurred March 26 and 27. A second phase of recontracting -- April 4 and 5 -- allowed students to move to different rooms in their campus community.

After the second phase, Payne said Wednesday, most rooms in the North and Mid campus communities had been assigned, with few rooms remaining in some South Campus residence halls as well.

The third phase of recontracting, which is currently ongoing, allows students to choose from any open rooms on campus. This process was opened to graduate students, seniors and juniors on Tuesday; current sophomores on Wednesday; and freshmen at 7 a.m. today.

This phase will remain open until 7 p.m. Friday, enabling students to coordinate room assignments and make any final decisions regarding roommates and suitemates.

Though officials say the process has been effective, it also has experienced a few glitches. Payne said that last week, during phase two of the recontracting process, a few students were able to sign up for rooms in campus communities other than their own.

Payne said that about 30 students were involved and that each was contacted and removed from the housing assignments they had wrongly made.

Payne also said that students who search the database with a roommate preference were only directed to rooms with two vacancies so that all roommate preferences could be accommodated.

Payne said that the limited space remaining after recontracting does not include spaces reserved for incoming freshmen in each residence hall.

Bradley said that students seem generally pleased with the recontracting procedures. "The amount of people who have successfully recontracted would indicate that a great majority of the student population is satisfied with the process," he said.

But some students said they were left with few housing options. Freshman Patrick Peterson said that he was not able to find a room out of South Campus but that he was able to secure his current room for another year. "I'm a little bitter, but I'll get over it," Peterson said. "A lot of my friends tried to stay on South Campus."

But sophomore Max Dayvault, who has lived in Morrison Residence Hall for two years, said he was upset when no rooms outside of South Campus were available. "The only rooms available were in the dorm I'm already in," Dayvault said. "I'm kind of pissed off. You would think as a rising junior I would have some priority."

The University Editor can be reached at udesk@unc.edu.