With changes in enrollment come changes in student living situations, and this coming year will welcome a fewof those changes. As of now, there are 3,517 on campus beds, and there is a target housing student number of 3,783. However, the proposed budget cuts will have minimal effect on UW-La Crosse students living on campus.
The current campus beds include 377 beds in Reuter, 500 beds in Eagle, 2,301 beds in the traditional dorms, 251 extra beds in Eagle from triple-doubles and single rooms, 16 guest room spaces and 72 study spaces.
The target housing student number is taken from projected first year students, transfer students, international students and the number of students continuing to live on campus. That number leaves approximately 260 students without a bed on campus.
There were rumors circulating campus that Laux Hall would be turned into another dorm where every room would be a triple-double, but Nick Nicklaus, the Director of Residence Life, explained what would actually be happening to accommodate the extra students.
Nicklaus stated, “What we do in general is try to have one [triple-double] per living community, one per RA. And then when we have 83 of those, we go back and do it again. So we don’t over populate one wing, or cube of floor. For bathrooms, if for nothing else.”
He also explained how the university has been utilizing studies, guest rooms, creating triple-doubles and requiring RA’s to have roommates to help the housing situation.
“We’ve had people in triple-doubles for five or six years now, ever since Centennial opened up. There were three buildings where Centennial was, two office buildings and a dorm, so we lost 400 beds. And then we opened up Reuter and Eagle.”
To help with the increasing enrollment rates, there was a proposal for a new residence hall to be built behind Whitney Center.
Nicklaus said that it was unfortunate that this wasn’t accepted because it would have, “alleviated the housing crunch after a couple years.”
In the past, the Office of Residence Life has worked with off-campus housing to increase housing options for students, but that didn’t work out as well as they had hoped.
In regards to off-campus housing, Nicklaus said, “Another dynamic that goes into all of this, is the off-campus housing market is pretty well saturated. 99 percent full, so to have people move off campus, there isn’t room for that.”
The direct impact of the proposed budget cuts on students has been minimal at this point.  For now, there will only be smaller renovation plans put to a hold.
Nicklaus said that it is important for students to know that they’re, “making a very strong effort to make sure to minimize any direct impact to the students as a result of the proposed budget cuts.”
There is a proposal for the residence halls to be audited. Once that has happened, some potentials for the dorms are: adding sprinkler systems, making sure there is an elevator in every residence hall, ripping out built in furniture, and adding carpet to all student rooms.