“It will be survivable,” one anonymous new student said. He is not discussing his difficult Exeter classes or balancing a hectic schedule. He is describing his dorm room for the year, a recently converted emergency double.After a high yield of accepted students for the 2013-2014 school year, the administration needed to address housing allocation, especially in response to an unexpected increase in male students.The administration has already taken the measure of switching Browning House from a girls’ dormitory to a boys’ dormitory, forcing more than 20 returning students to find a new living space. Emergency doubles became a necessary measure as well.According to Dean of Residential Life AJ Cosgrove, there are 10 doubles that have been converted from singles and 2 doubles that have been converted from common rooms in boys’ dormitories. In girls’ dorms, 8 singles have been converted to doubles and 3 common spaces have been converted as singles. Currently, Dunbar Hall houses the only triple room on campus, used by three uppers.Despite the record-high yield, Cosgrove commented that the number of emergency rooms is not out of the norm. “Every year we typically use 10 to 20 doubles that are sometimes used for single rooms,” he said.Students being placed into the alternative emergency doubles received an email from Cosgrove, stating that the “emergency rooms are totally suitable, but typically used as a single and not a double.” Some of them also received offers to move into a house for a normal double or single room.Like every other new student, lower Tyler Koh received notice that he was assigned to Wentworth Hall in midsummer. However, he was later notified that he had been assigned to an emergency double. “[The deans] told me about the emergency double a week or two before school started. Before that, I thought I had a normal double,” he said.
Although Koh enjoyed having a double as a new student, he said that there were apparent difficulties to having to fit two students into a room that is meant to be for one student.“The room is meant to be built for a single room, so there’s one Ethernet cord, which [will] make internet use difficult until the new Wi-Fi comes in. There’s also one closet, which we have to share,” Koh said.Senior David Gindra, like Koh, had to live in an emergency double for his first year in Webster Hall South. Unlike Koh, Gindra said that he was surprised to discover the relatively small size of his room, compared to other doubles at the Academy.“I knew I had a roommate before I came, but I was never notified that I would have an emergency double,” Gindra said. “Only one person could listen to music, and there was only one Ethernet outlet, so we had to get a hub. There wasn't a lot of space, so the room felt really stuffed as well.”Meanwhile, a new student is currently in limbo—he was notified a week after school began that his large single in Webster may be converted to a double if necessary.The student’s room may be changed if another student needs to move out of a dorm or a returning student comes back from abroad. “It’s the biggest room I’ve been in, and could absolutely be a double,” he said. “I understand the situation, but hopefully it doesn’t have to happen.”Cosgrove commented that although the housing situation might seem and problematic because of the emergency doubles, that the thorough planning of the administration and dormitory faculty has made housing all of the boarding students possible.“The dorm heads were very helpful during the process of finding spaces on campus. In some cases, dorms are sacrificing common room spaces or dorm affiliate duty rooms,” Cosgrove said.Returning students from abroad programs also cause housing problems. “The one issue that we always deal with every year is that we have more girls returning from term abroad than we have leaving,” Cosgrove said. “I doubt that problem will go away, because the demographic of term abroad programs has been girl heavy for a while now."In contrast, some unforeseen, yet beneficial situations have arisen from the extended housing planning. “We were able to find some single rooms that were never designated as ‘emergency’ spaces but are bigger than many of the doubles on campus,” Cosgrove said. “Ironically, given the demand for rooms this year, we were able to not use some of the least desirable emergency rooms on campus this year because of the careful re-examination of the spaces in dorms.”For next year, Cosgrove believes that some dorms will revert back to their original genders, dependent on admissions’ yield.The most likely scenario would be “switching a smaller girls’ [dorm] back because they’re easier to flip," he said.
