Some are placed in temporary rooms and Bear Creek due to increased attendance

Once again the campus is teeming with the chatter of conversations between incoming freshmen and their parents over the anticipation of move-in day. This year the voices are even louder as one of the largest classes of incoming freshmen moves in.

According to Ryan Chreist, the associate director of admissions at CU, approximately 5,500 new freshmen are expected to begin their college careers at CU this fall. In fall 2005, the freshman count only reached about 5,000. Consequently, the increase in freshman attendance is creating a shortage in housing.

“I was all excited to move into my dorm and meet my new roommate, but I was assigned to a temporary dorm room so I was kind of disappointed,” said Jin Hongsunirundon, a freshman molecular biology major. “It is also kind of annoying that I don’t know when I’ll be moving to my permanent dorm room.”

Deborah Coffin, executive director of Housing and Dining Services, said there are 5,970 residence hall beds and 960 Bear Creek Apartment beds, and they have all been assigned to students expected to attend CU this fall.

Like Hongsunirundon, many students are living in temporary or overflow rooms until the university can find them permanent dorm rooms on campus. Coffin mentioned it is typical for the university to use the rooms for a period of time every year.

“We are using all temp spaces,” Coffin said. “Typically we use a portion of them. We will assign temp students to permanent rooms as we identify cancellations.”

Hongsunirundon was told by housing administration that she could be getting her permanent room assignment anytime from September to December.

“We always have temporary rooms in our inventory and typically have to use some of them for a short period of time,” Coffin said. “We have assigned all beds available at Bear Creek. We only assigned 28 freshmen there because of the high demand from non-freshmen students.”

As of August 24, housing has been offered to all but 28 freshmen, of which 22 live locally.

“We anticipate accommodating the 6 non-local freshmen as cancellations come in the next few days,” Coffin said.

According to Chreist, though CU is receiving one of its largest freshmen classes this fall, the housing situation does not arise from the fact that CU is admitting more students this year than they usually do. They offer admission to a certain number of students every year and the number this year has not changed; more students are just accepting admission to CU.

“The fact is that more students want to come to CU, which is very exciting,” Chreist said. “This year, more students just decided to say yes to our offer of admission.”

Chreist also said the overall enrollment of non-freshmen including transfer, readmitted and graduate students is smaller than last year, so the fact that the freshmen class is larger than usual should not have much of impact on other students.

“This is one of our most diverse and academically prepared freshman classes,” said Chreist. “It is also a great mix of in- and out-of-state students.”

Chreist said it usually takes a couple of weeks to figure out student attendance. After the administration addresses student attendance and cancellations, finding students’ permanent spots and housing will not be a problem.

“I hope that they figure out the housing situation soon, so I won’t feel lost anymore,” said Hongsunirundon.