Dear Mr. Quirmbach:

Thank you for writing to express your concern about the new residence hall policies at Iowa State University. I have also received letters from Ms. Reid and Ms. Thompson and have sent a response in effort to help them understand our situation.

The Department of Residence has had for severeal years a goal to guarantee housing in the Richardson Court and Union Drive residence hall neighborhoods to those first-year students who want to live there. Departmental research indicated that these two neighborhoods are the locations in which new freshmen most want to live. It was also obvious that these were two areas in which new freshmen felt they could be most successful.

We chose to make housing freshmen a priority because research indicates very strongly that the first year of college is a critical one in determining the successes or failures of colelge stduents. We believe that it is important to provide first-year students with living communities in which they are happy and feel they can be personally successful. Many universities have "freshmen-only" residence halls. We at Iowa STate feel that "freshmen-only" halls are not necessarily the right approach, however, to providing first-year students with a positive and supportive residential experience. Upper-division students residing in the halls, as Ms. Reid and Ms. Thompson noted in their letters, serve as role models and help provide community leadership, and we feel it is important to maintain that interaction between upper-division students and first-year students.

In order to fulfill the goal of providing housing to first-year students in Richardson Court and Union Drive AND to fulfill and recognize our goal of providing a good mix of upper-division students in the community, the Department of Residence determined that it would need to reserve as much as 75 percent of the space in each house for new freshmen in 2003-2004. This number was selected based upon projected demand and enrollment. The latest indications from enrollment services suggest that even more than 25 percent of each house will be availiable to upper-division students.

Statistics show us that this is a reasonable percentage. In Oak-Elm Halls, for example, 86 of 374 students - 22.9 percent - returned this year. Had the new process been in place last year, Oak-Elm residents would ahve been unaffected, as all would have been able to return to the building.

Based upon this statistic and other similar historical return rate statistics, the Department of Residence believes that most upper-division students who whish to return to their rooms, houses, or halls for 2003-2004 will be able to do so without a problem. Obviously, it is possible that there may be some individual houses on which more than the allotted number of residents wish to return; however, any student who cannot return to his or her house will likely be able to return to his or her same hall or neighborhood.

Under the new residence hall sysetem, upper-division students will be able to select from almost all single-student campus housing, including many options not available to freshmen. In addition to Richardson Court and Union Drive, Frederiksen Court apartments and Wallace-Wilson residence halls have been renovated specifically for upper-division students. Buchanan Hall is currently undergoing a similar renovation for future upper-division student housing. However, it is important to emphasize that upper-division students are not limited specifically to upper-division housing, nor are they required to live anywhere on campus.

The prior system likely did not seem problematic to upper-division students, or even to new freshmen who received their top choices of room assignments, because upper-division students had all the priority to select housing. However, many first-year students who ended up being placed in temporary housing assignments or in housing assignments that did not match their preferences were frequently frustrated by the system.

Please be aware that the philosophy of the residence department's master plan is not at all to reduce the amount of space on campus to any group but rather to ensure that there is a variety of desirable housing options available to both first-year students and upper-division students alike.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions I can answer.

Sincerely,

Randy Alexander