Dearmont housing proposal underway

Students will have the opportunity to live in a private room on campus without paying double the usual rate for the first time beginning this fall if a Office of Residence Life proposal is approved.

A plan to convert Dearmont Hall from a double occupancy living space to a single will take effect as soon as the new housing rate is approved by the Board of Regents.

Dr. Bruce Skinner, assistant vice president for student success and director of Residence Life, said that the proposal has been made with the support of university President Kenneth W. Dobbins.

"He was supportive in terms of meeting the demands of students who want single rooms and so there's a certain interest in trying this in meeting student demand for private spaces," Skinner said.

Private housing always has been a priority among Southeast Missouri State University students, but with enrollment constantly increasing there was no way to accommodate those wishes.

"There were periods of time, as recently as '05, '04 where we had 200 students living in rooms by themselves. Now we are well under 100," Skinner said. "On a good year we maybe had 100 but still we are 100 students below what we have been at for previous years. And the reason is we just don't have the space to give them."

With the opening of Merrick and New Hall and future River Campus housing Southeast has gained approximately 700 beds in recent years. Skinner said that even after removing 140 beds from Dearmont there will still be ample space.

"So we've run the numbers, even if we had 150 more students in fall 2014 than we had last fall, we would still be able to accommodate everyone that lives on campus with Dearmont single rooms," Skinner said.

Another reason for the additional housing is living in a room that is not intended to be private costs students approximately $9,000 a year.

Skinner said some students are willing to pay that amount but many wish they could have more affordable housing. He said that when he pitches the room rates to the Board of Regents the rate will be higher than that of what it currently costs to live in a double room but will be less than the $9,000 students pay now.

"All the students who live on this side of campus have meal plans, if Dearmont was single occupancy that means we would have fewer people living in Dearmont therefore less people during the peak times at the University Center," Skinner said. "So it has a little bit of an impact on the University Center as well."

Members of Residence Life will pitch the idea to the Board of Regents in February after deciding on a price. Skinner said the price point will be finalized after receiving feedback from students in the coming weeks.

Skinner also said that the number of RAs will most likely be cut back in Dearmont because of the single occupancies. The decision on how many RA's will return to Dearmont in the fall will be decided in February.

"We haven't fully decided on the number of RAs. We may have RAs that share two floors," Skinner said. "With single occupancy that would be 35 people total and keep in mind we've also taken away the biggest issue that some RA's have to deal with and that is roommate conflicts. We may have fewer, but we're not going from 11 down to six."

Skinner also said that Dearmont is the prime location for single housing because of the way the building is designed. It is the second oldest building on campus, built in 1958, 20 years after Cheney Hall's construction.

"We chose Dearmont for a couple of reasons, one, I actually believe Dearmont has the best layout of any residence hall on this campus. It had the traditional college quad, it has the hallways with rooms right across from each other, so if you have your door open and your person across has their door open you can actually see each other and interact with each other," Skinner said.

"My fear of putting private rooms in buildings that don't have that kind of set up is that students won't interact with each other. They have a room that they can retreat into and be by themselves great, but with their doors open, like with some of our suite-style buildings, they only see the same three or four people who live on their side of the hallway, they don't see anybody else."

The size of the room is also a factor. Dearmont rooms are approximately 160 square feet while the new rooms being built are nearly 250 square feet, making the Dearmont rooms practical for housing one person.

This summer Dearmont will undergo the second half of electrical updates that began last summer. Skinner said the project costs approximately $500,000 and is necessary for safety precautions and to accommodate the increasing amount of electronics students bring with them to college.

"I'm not worried about getting people in Dearmont," Skinner said. "I just want to get more people in Dearmont to say, 'This is absolutely my first or second choice, not my third or fourth choice,' so it's getting people to say its my first or second and not, 'Oh yeah. I'll take that, that's good enough.'"