Overcrowded RIT dorms drawing fire

When Bryanne McDonough arrived at Rochester Institute of Technology a couple of weeks ago for another year of classes, the study lounge on her floor of Colby Hall had two whiteboards, tables and a library.

But that's all gone. Instead, the lounge at this residence hall has been converted into a dorm room, home to three RIT freshmen.

The conversion of lounges in residence halls to dorm rooms has also occurred at the nine other dorms on campus to cope with RIT's overcrowding problem. With a record enrollment of more than 18,500 students, RIT has about 300 more students than expected. That happened because more students than projected from the pool of accepted students ended up enrolling.

By the end of Friday, all 73 RIT students temporarily housed at the Radisson hotel on Jefferson Road were slated to move into RIT housing — with the 46 freshmen who were there moving into the makeshift dorm rooms, according to Dawn Soufleris, associate vice president for student affairs at RIT.

An additional 144 students, not freshmen, are living at the RIT Inn and Conference Center on West Henrietta Road. Where they will end up staying has yet to be decided.

While McDonough and other RIT students can understand the need to accommodate this enrollment, the problem hit a sensitive nerve.

On Thursday, RIT student Rory Glenn started an online petition, "Stop Overbooking RIT Housing" on the college's PawPrints website. By Friday evening, the petition had been signed by 785 students.

"Every year, RIT has a bigger and bigger influx of freshman students and every year RIT leaves more and more of them high and dry when it comes to housing," says the petition.

The petition says that, in the past, college officials have used the RIT Inn and occasionally the Radisson as temporary housing for students with the promise of moving them to dorms when an estimated 50 students typically drop out during the first semester.

But the situation has become more severe, with 217 students needing temporary housing at the RIT Inn and Radisson, even after rooms were converted from doubles to triples or triples to quads.

"Freshmen should come here feeling welcome, with a living space to call their own and enough room for them to maintain some level of independence," says the petition.

Glenn, 21, a fourth-year student from Mentor, Ohio, is also a resident adviser at Ellingson Hall, where lounges on five of the 12 floors have been converted into dorm rooms.

"I know that nothing can be done for this incoming year. I accept that," said Glenn. "I want to start a conversation for the future," he added.

Soufleris said that this conversation has already begun. David Bagley, senior director for the Center for Residence Life, addressed the meeting of Student Government on Friday.

"He gave the students an overview of where we were and how we are moving students into the lounges," Soufleris said.

RIT, Soufleris added, is planning to add 150 beds within 20 months; a new residence hall is being planned.

Currently, about 7,500 students live on the RIT campus in Henrietta.

Soufleris said that this year's unexpected increase was a "blip," the first time enrollment far exceeded expectations. She said that RIT's growing reputation — being the top choice for more of the students accepted in the admissions process — was a major factor.

But students said that the college should have been better prepared for the need for more housing, since overcrowding has been a problem in recent years as RIT's enrollment has increased by about 1,300 since 2010.

"It has been a growing problem and a lot of students have complained," said Leslie Bowen, a fifth-year student from Frederick, Maryland.

Bowen, 22, described how two years ago she had trouble finding housing on campus but finally was able to get a campus apartment for a semester while the student who was supposed to live in that unit participated in a co-op program in Kentucky — the kind of paid internship that many RIT students are required to do.

When the student returned to campus for the second semester, Bowen had to move to off-campus housing.

Soufleris said that it was important for the 46 freshmen who were living temporarily at the Radisson to get housing on campus. They can expect to stay in the lounges converted to dorm rooms for a semester. They would then be moved to on-campus housing that is expected to open up.

The plan is that these makeshift dorm rooms will be converted back to lounges for the second semester.

Families whose students have been put in this temporary housing were contacted over the summer. The 46 students who will be moved from the Radisson to the makeshift dorm rooms will get a 20 percent discount on their fall semester rent, said Soufleris.

Students in dorm rooms that are currently beyond their current regular occupancy — but had not been temporarily housed at the Radisson — also will get a 20 percent discount on their fall semester rent.

Fifty-five sets of furniture — beds, dressers, desk and chairs — were delivered Friday to RIT — so that temporary dorm rooms could be fully furnished by the end of the day.

JGOODMAN@Gannett.com