CEDAR CITY, Utah — Incoming freshman Gabrielle Szczerbiak isn’t getting the traditional college housing experience she expected.
She will have a roommate, and there will be rules — no boys in the bedrooms and a curfew. What’s different is that her dorm room will be in a private home.
The rules aren’t being imposed by any college — they’re actually the wishes of the married couple who are taking in the 18-year-old music major after she got stalled on a rural Utah university’s housing waitlist.
This fall, an enrollment boom that created a housing crisis has prompted Southern Utah University in Cedar City to urge neighbors and employees alike to house the dormless. Many have done so, creating an unusual if not quirky housing situation.
It’s not uncommon for a small college to get creative when campus housing fills up, sending first-year students to such dorm alternatives as local hotels, rival schools, or even a waterpark. But housing officials say they’ve never heard of a college resorting to putting up students in the spare bedrooms of employees and residents.
Such unusual arrangements don’t necessarily impact student retention, although most agree such an inconvenient step isn’t ideal during an already stressful life interchange.
Calculating exact college enrollment figures can be tricky with the fickle nature of young adults who often change plans during summer months.
That’s why the industry standard is to assume there will be a significant ‘‘melt’’ of the student population and overbook, said Allan Blattner, president of the Association of College and University Housing Officers International and a college housing official for more than two decades.
For a big campus like the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where Blattner is housing director, a few hundred kids can be squeezed in across a massive campus, or off-campus partners can strike a quick deal with the school. But the options are more limited at small schools in small towns.
Loyola University in New Orleans said when it previously hit capacity that its students slept at rival Tulane University’s much larger campus.
This year, Scripps College in Claremont, Calif. said it’s putting 30 freshmen students in a new residence hall at neighboring Harvey Mudd College. Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash., is housing 134 students at the Red Lion River Inn.
Two years ago, Capital University in Bexley, Ohio, made news when it housed about 30 first-year students at the Fort Rapids Indoor Waterpark Resort for two weeks.
Housing snags sometimes occur in off-campus housing, too. Officials at Utah State University in Logan are converting rooms and doubling up roommates to help 300 students who found out last week that a new, private apartment building won’t be ready in time.
The waiting list for housing at Southern Utah University peaked with 300 students as the school attracted its largest freshman class ever. The 1,564 students mark a 26 percent increase over last year at the campus 250 miles south of Salt Lake City. As of the first week of August, the waiting list was down to 50.
The school made a plea for spare bedrooms three weeks before the Aug. 19 move-in day. People in the close-knit community who opened their homes included the town hairdresser and university employees, including the provost and admissions director.