University of Virginia Library

Upperclassmen Face Housing Crunch By 1973

students who will be unable to
obtain on-campus housing. To
accommodate them Mr. Williams
feels that the University will need
1500 spaces by 1973, "according to
our best estimates."

These estimates have taken into
account the possibility that
coeducation will bring an increased
percentage of students choosing to
live on campus and the fact that
first-year men, because they are
assigned large numbers of
councilors, require, in effect, more
housing space per man than the
upper-class men they will replace.

No Official Knowledge

It is not officially known what
recommendations, if any, the
Housing Committee will make to
President Shannon concerning this
problem. The minutes of
Committee meetings are not
released to the public, presumably
because the Committee's purpose is
to advise the President.

"I know of no University policy
commitment obliging it to supply
housing for upper-class students,"
says Mr. Williams, indicating that
the University does not consider
itself bound to case the upcoming
'crunch.' Housing must be made
available only to those students
who are forced to live on campus;
in this case, just first-year students.
"Historically," Mr. Williams adds,
"this has been a campus where
upperclass students have generally
preferred to live off-campus."

Planned Action

This does not mean that no
action is planned. The
administration is aware that
recently students have opted for
on-campus housing in increasing
numbers. This may be due to a
relaxation of parietal rules, a
campus parking situation which
makes commuting to class
impractical, a rise in the quality of
on-campus housing or simply a rise
in off-campus rents. Furthermore,
there is the possibility that
well-planned University Housing
could be more than convenient. It
might contain cultural and
academic advantages as well.

Residential Colleges

Without revealing anything
definite, Mr. Williams noted that
the Housing Committee was
seriously considering the possibility
of constructing residential colleges
on-campus, along the lines
recommended by the Master Plan
Committee of the Student Council
in 1968. A residential college of
this type would be similar to 'living
centers' at the Universities of
Indiana and North Carolina.

It would house not more than
500 students, hopefully in single
rooms, and would be partially
independent of the University, with
its own eating and research facilities
"designed to encourage the habit of
reading" and space for one faculty
member and his family. It would
house no classrooms but would
encourage "student-inspired
programs of non-credit courses."

Extra Million Dollars

Such a complex would require
175,000 square feet for its 500
students, meaning that it would
cost as much as a million dollars
more than could be raised through
rents. This money would have to
come from a special fund-raising
campaign, since the University can
receive, by state law, no public
funds whatsoever for housing. Lambeth
Field is the site most commonly
considered for such a project.

The Residential College Plan
would presumably eliminate the
housing shortage and
simultaneously provide: a
self-contained academic village
which would reconcile the
Jeffersonian ideal with the
complexities and numbers of the
State U. reality here at the
University. The idea was proposed
to the Housing Committee by J.
Ronald Hickman, a fifth-year
architecture student who was the
Chairman of the Student Council
Committee which originally
developed the plan.

Although Mr. Williams, the
committee chairman, isn't saying
much, highly informed sources
reveal that, on January 14, 1970,
the following motion was passed
unanimously by the Housing
Committee.

"...that the Committee
recommend to the President
that the first 1000 spaces of the
estimated 1500 needed be built
along the lines of the residential
college described in "A Study of
the Feasibility (sic) of
Implementing Residential
Colleges at the University"
compiled by the Master Plan
Committee of the Student
Council in May, 1968. It is the
sense of the Committee that
unless it is feasible to construct
colleges embodying the concepts
contained in this report, the
Committee should be so
informed and the Committee
would then recommend a
different approach to housing.
The Committee strongly feels
that because of the limited
amount of land available on the
central grounds, this may be the
University's last chance to have
a residential college."

Many Difficulties

The implementation of this
recommendation will entail
numerous difficulties, some of
which have been alluded to by
Chairman Williams, and concern the
entire area of student housing,
while others are more specific in
nature.

Economically, as Mr. Williams
realizes, investment in student
housing involves a gamble. This is a
large factor in the University's
decision not to guarantee housing
to all of its students. Student
housing, like University Food
Services, is an auxiliary enterprise
under state law. This means it must
pay for itself. To do so, at present
rent levels, requires that dorms be
90% occupied. When the free rooms
held by councilors are considered,
as in first-year dorms, the
occupancy level must reach 96% or
else the rent goes up.

Housing Rule

This means that the University
must either force students to live in
its dorms, as it did in many cases
until this year, or keep the available
space low enough to guarantee full
occupancy. If the latter alternative
is chosen, there must be some sort
of variable in the student
population which can be offered
rooms when they are available and
denied them when they are not.
That variable, in this case, includes
all upperclass and graduate
students.

Thus the housing 'crunch' that
Dean Williams anticipates by 1973
is merely the restriction of this
variable. The problem is that a
sufficiently severe restriction, one
involving as many as 1500 students,
has detrimental effects on the
entire University. If local housing
units are not developed fast enough
to accommodate the student
overflow the displaced upper-class
men are left with distant housing,
which leads to parking problems for
those fortunate enough to own
cars, or no accommodations at all.

It cannot be known for certain
if local housing can keep up with
University demand. It has tended to
in the past, but presently seems to
be tapering off. There are several
reasons for this, one of which is the
present credit squeeze which is
hurting the building industry
nationally and another is the near
saturation of the University area
with what housing which already
exists. Most of the building
presently taking place in Albemarle
County seems to be at an
increasingly large distance from the
Grounds.

Student Preferences

Another unpredictable factor in
student housing involves the
preferences of the students
themselves. This is especially
critical, according to Mr. Williams,
with the advent of co-education.
Dean of Women, Miss Mary
Whitney, reported in the September
24 meetings of the Housing
Committee her feeling that "more
women than men would prefer to
live in the dormitories and that
many parents would insist that
their daughters live in dormitories
as many as 70%."

Effects

If Dean Whitney's guess is
correct, then failure to construct
new dormitories immediately
would have three probable effects.
The squeeze, when it comes, will be
worsened. It will affect women
more than men, and, for that
reason, will serve to discourage
co-education.

In the light of these
considerations, certain specific
objections might be raised against
the considered residential college
plan. There are indications that it
cannot be planned and constructed
before 1974, which would mean
that the University would be unable
to guarantee adequate housing,
either on or off campus, for two
years. Our sources reveal that, on
December 3, before the Housing
Committee considered the
Residential College Plan, it moved
to recommend "...the building of
1000 additional spaces for 1972
with an additional 500 to be built
for 1973..."

Conflicting Plans

According to Werner K.
Sensbach, director of the University
Planning Department, and an
architect by profession, a complex
such as that presently under
consideration would require one
year for architectural planning, four
months for site planning, and a two
year period of construction. If Mr.
Sensbach is correct, then the two
tentative recommendations of the
Housing Committee, 1000 units by
1972 and a residential college to
encompass those units, are
mutually exclusive.

Tentative Estimate

On the other hand, since there
have been no official
recommendations made by the
Housing Committee, Mr. Sensbach
could not be given enough data for
anything but a tentative estimate. It
may be that the University could
adopt its blueprints from another
school and push every aspect of the
program to save as much as a year.
Mr. Williams feels that it would be
only 24 to 30 months until
completion of a residential college,
which would allow it to open
sometime in 1972.

The economic risk of
constructing a residential college
seems to be compounded by several
factors.

The first is the high price of the
complex, which will put
considerable pressure on the
Administration to keep it filled.
Some of the expense might be
defrayed, according to Richard .
Shutts, Business Manager of the
University, by allowing University
Food Services to take financial
responsibility for the dining area;
however, this would probably
involve forcing each member of the
community to purchase meal
tickets along with his rental fee.

Off-Grounds Housing

Another problem is the
unpredictability of off-grounds
housing. Private apartment builders
do not have to meet the same
specifications in their construction
as does the University. As Mr.
Shutts puts it, "They can build for
twenty-five years and we have to
build for fifty."

Independent contractors have
the initial advantage of basic plans
which can be used as many times as
necessary. Thus apartment builders
can compete with the residential
college for its occupants, should
they choose to do so, and can
develop a considerable amount of
competition between the time that
the University first chooses to
invest in the proposed complex and
the time of its completion.

Unsolved Problems

The danger of off-grounds
housing to the residential college is
increased by the fact that it is
planned to be utilized by
upper-class undergraduates and not
first-year students. Fraternities,
boarding houses and apartments are
competing for these people. It is
not known what student opinion is
regarding the idea of living in a
residential college with five
hundred people, a situation made
more difficult by the Housing
Committee's refusal to reveal the
minutes of its meetings.

If students generally found the
residential college disagreeable and
had other places to live available by
1973, the University would be
forced to require at least some
undergraduates to live in the college
against their wishes. In the light of
the present lack of communication
between the student body and the
Housing Committee as so vital an
issue is being considered, the result
might be a very unpleasant
situation.

No Report Made

Although it would appear that
the Housing Committee is preparing
to recommend to the President that
the University develop a residential
college system, no
recommendations have yet been
made. Mr. Williams has indicated
that he is unable to predict when
the Committee will make its report
or what that report will say. Mr.
Williams, Mr. Sensback and Mr.
Shutts all agree that, at this point,
it would be helpful to the
committee and the University
community as a whole to survey
student opinion regarding a
residential college system.

Alternatives

There are a number of
alternatives to the present
proposals, some of which are listed
below, and none of which seem
entirely satisfactory. It is in the
area of imaginative alternative
solutions to the present situation
that widespread concern can be
most useful.

1. The University could
construct more dorms using the
Alderman Road blueprints. These
would be faster and cheaper than a
Residential College, but would
entail the anonymity and sterility
commonly associated with
State-Uism as a cheap expedient
method of solving problems. They
would solve the statistical problem
of overcrowding but would ignore
the human problem of personal
relations.

Photo By Ed

An Aerial View Of The McCormick Road Dormitories

All University Housing Will Be Filled With First-Year Men By 1973

2. The University could simply
restrict its growth for a while. One
of the main assumptions made by
the Office of Institutional Analysis
when they projected the population
of the University through 1980 was
that it would continue to accept
roughly the same percentage of
college students statewide as it had
in the past, but this was only an
assumption. The effects that a
decision to take a continually
decreasing percentage of qualified
applicants might have on the
University's financial future alone
would probably rule out such a
decision.

3. The University could have a
private contractor erect
comparatively fast, cheap housing,
agreeing only to guarantee full
occupancy or some sort of subsidy.
This, according to Mr. Shutts, was
once a very popular system with
contractors and colleges alike, until
everyone found out that it didn't
work. The environments are
generally sterile, the University has
no real control over rent and
regulations in the apartments, and
the landlord, with a guaranteed
subsidy, is not likely to be anxious
to please the students living in his
building.

4. Professor A. Bea of
the English Department has
presented a paper suggesting that
the Lawn be turned a
Residential College, replete with an
adjacent undergraduate library. The
pavilions would be used for
classrooms, while it isn't clear what
would become of their many and
varied occupants. This plan,
unfortunately, makes no practical
allowance for the immensity of
population explosion the University
ds itself a part Professor
Bealine speaks of the
administration into "one of
the dormitories that would be
vacated by students assigned to the
Lawn." There would be no vacated
dormitories: they would be refilled
in less than the time required for
such a .

5. K. Sensbach, the
director of the Planning
Department, observes that, "The
Residential College Plan was
proposed by an architecture
student and is an architect's dream.
architects, being one
myself. Why can't the Cavalier
Daily give the students a chance to
say for themselves what sort of
environment they would like? They
will make it a success failure, not
the architect. They will have to live
in it. The best solution may turn
out to be one that no committee
has ever heard of, and the only way
to find out is to ask."