Erica Cudkowicz, a freshman living in the Bader/Snyder complex, arrived on campus for the first day of orientation in the fall of 2018, excited to start her undergraduate education at Fort Lewis College.

However when she arrived to campus, instead of moving into a traditional room, she began unpacking into a lounge in the dorm that had been converted into a makeshift dorm room with two other residents.

Cudkowicz is one of a handful of on-campus residents who were placed in rooms not typically used for housing, such as lounges and study rooms.

The converted rooms can be found in all dorms except for three, and house the same sex in each room. Camp, Crofton and Escalante were exempt because the rooms would have taken all common areas away from other residents, said Margarete Watts, associate director of student housing.

These rooms, which the Fort Lewis College Housing and Conference Services Office calls disconnected rooms, were created due to unexpected occupancy numbers, Watts said.

The cost of these converted lounges is the same as paying for a traditional-style double dorm room.

The FLC Housing Office bases its occupancy numbers off enrollment figures given to them by the admissions office. The predictive model that housing uses looks at the projected enrollment numbers and the number of first year students expected. This allows housing to approximate the occupancy for student housing.

“We’ve been using those for years and years and those have always been right,” Watts said.

The housing department does not stop taking applications until the semester has started, with some students applying for housing a week into the semester, according to Watts.

“We keep it open because we want to make sure that if a student needs a place to live that we are finding them a place to live,” Watts said. “Data shows that if students live in on-campus housing, even for one year, that increases their retention rate.”

Watts also said the admissions department had more people applying than anyone expected, and that “this year, there were a lot of people applying later in the year, which threw off what we were expecting.”

The disconnected rooms were not created due to Cooper Hall renovations, which entered the planning phase in June 2017. Housing knew that the dorm would not be open for residency during the 2018-2019 school year.

“Our number showed that we would have enough spaces for everybody based off of all the predictive data that we’ve used,” Watts said.  

Housing officials notified the students who were put in the disconnected rooms by phone call a couple of weeks before they moved in and left voicemails for those who didn’t answer their phone, Watts said. FLC records communication with students to make sure that everyone was contacted.

“We didn’t want people who were going into college and everything that happens for individuals and families at that time to be told as they’re driving to FLC that this is happening,” Watts said.

There are fewer than 20 students on campus living in disconnected rooms, she said.

When the residents arrived on campus, the department had residence directors and resident assistants in place to ensure the students felt comfortable with their living situations, Watts said.

“As soon as they arrived, they checked in, and our staff met with them and talked about it and went over, ‘what are your concerns and this is how we’re going to make it work,’ and if they had major concerns then we would look at other options,” Watts said. “We wanted to be able to have them feel like we can answer all of their questions.”

Cudkowicz feels fine about her situation and said that this is because her room feels like an average room with its desks, dressers, beds and chairs.

“It is about the same amount of space as a normal dorm room although instead of sharing it with one person, I share it with two,” Cudkowicz said.

One roommate has more space than the other two because of the layout of the room, she said. Since that roommate showed up first, the other two roommates let her have the space she chose.

“I was working during orientation, so I kind of got last pickings of beds,” Cudkowicz said.

Bader/Snyder has suite-style dorm rooms, so Cudkowicz has to use another resident’s dorm room to use the bathroom and shower facilities. Therefore seven people have to use the same shower.

“It sometimes gets a little bit crazy,” Cudkowicz said. “If you’re trying to shower at a pretty normal time in the morning, you’ll probably have to wait.”

Students placed in these makeshift rooms aren’t the only ones impacted by the use of disconnected rooms.

Hannah Gondini, who lives in a dormitory, has residents come into her dorm room to use her shower. Gondini wasn’t informed she would have other residents use her shower facilities until a residence director told her and her suitmates on move-in day. The residence director didn’t clarify how long the situation would last, Gondini said.

Watts said that bathroom assignments for disconnected rooms were based on proximity.

Gondoni pays the full price of a traditional double occupancy room in West, which is $3,344,00.

Before students could live in these rooms they had to be approved for residency.

Rooms where people will be sleeping require windows and doors to escape through in the case of a fire, sprinklers and a fire detector system, Durango Fire Protection District Fire Marshal Karola Hanks said.

The disconnected rooms were inspected by the Durango Fire Protection District during facility checks this year.

Fort Lewis College and the Durango Fire Protection District have a memorandum of understanding regarding code compliance. Residential buildings are checked every two to three years to ensure they meet fire code, Hanks said. They are also inspected if a request from the school is made, she said.

The housing department also informed the Fort Lewis College Police Department that their would be a different housing situation during the academic year, FLC Chief of Police Brett Deming said.

The police will investigate any complaints about the rooms like any other incident, Deming said.

“If they were provided access or keys to a room then they, they’ve been provided permission to be in there,” Deming said.

If you have had a similar experience and wish to share it with us, email us at benjaminmandile.indy@gmail.com or (madrake@fortlewis.edu). You can also reach us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.