| TOP OF SITE | TOP OF ISSUE | TOP OF SECTION |
| PREVIOUS STORY | NEXT STORY |
All students requesting rooms who did not meet the required deadlines and have not yet been accommodated are being placed on a waiting list. Approximately 250 students, all male, are currently on the list.
"The freshman class is almost 400 people larger than they had anticipated, so we have an additional 300 more people than we anticipated that have to fit into housing," Acting Director of Housing Dan Morrison commented. "[Nonetheless], everyone who signed up on time and paid their money on time has a room as a result of all of the extra things we have done."
Morrison first created 200 extra freshman spaces by changing Caldwell and part of Folk into Freshman Experience dorms. This left 99 freshmen still without rooms.
"[Of those], we have 51 living at Georgia State University," said Morrison. "They are paying the same rate as any other Georgia Tech freshman is paying and the department is making up the difference."
Most of the remaining 48 freshmen have been accommodated by placing them in rooms with CAs or PAs who would normally receive their own room.
"There is a compensation for the CAs and PAs because their original contract was that they would have a double room to themselves," Morrison explained. "We have put together a compensation package where if they have a roommate for a couple weeks they get a credit, if they have a roommate for an additional couple of weeks, they get another credit."
According to Morrison, some of the freshmen with temporary spaces may be moved into permanent spaces as some unoccupied rooms become available. Two checks for no-shows may reveal those additional spaces.
"Students have to take possession of their rooms by 5:00 on the first day of classes," Morrison said. "After that you are considered a no-show. We will then contact as many of those no-shows as we can to find out if they are truly late or if they are just not coming."
"We then have a second verification where our CAs go around to each room and say 'okay, sign this to say that you are who you are and that you are in your room.' Then we will know exactly where we are. Our desire is to get 99 openings, but the reality is that we won't."
Housing officials have also been busy with a major reorganization. Morrison believes that the changes being instituted will foster an increased feeling of togetherness among students living in on-campus housing.
"We have some new policies both in terms of how our staff operates and how we want our residents to work with them," said Morrison. "We have embarked on a new model of how we want to work with students and it's called a community development model."
"There are now three positions called community directors who supervise the residence life coordinator. We are trying to use the word community instead of area; I believe that word change is associated with concepts of living together where as area is just geographic."
The Housing Department has tried to equip all of the temporary spaces with furnishings and connections to campus networks equivalent to existing rooms. In