More than 150 students remain on the wait list for 2010-2011 on-campus housing, but the University expects to clear the wait list by the end of the semester, the director of GW Housing Programs said Friday.
Nineteen of the 159 students on the wait list are sophomores who are required by D.C. zoning laws to live on campus, director of GW Housing Programs Seth Weinshel said in an e-mail.
When housing assignments were announced at the end of March, more than 700 students were put on the wait list, including 150 rising sophomores who are guaranteed University housing by D.C. law.
“Every single student that wants a space or is required to live on campus will be assigned this year,” Weinshel said.
Weinshel said as space becomes available students on the wait list are assigned to buildings.
Second-year students remain on the wait list because some of the spaces that opened up are designated as upperclassman-only residence halls due to zoning restrictions, including City Hall and 1959 E Street, Weinshel said.
Senior Vice President for Student and Academic Support Services Robert Chernak said the University was always committed to finding housing for waitlisted students.
“Using the term ‘wait list’ inferred a more tentative situation with regard to housing assignments than would normally be the case,” Chernak said.
Students said they were initially upset when they learned they were waitlisted, but the feeling subsided after being assigned housing for next year.
“When I received my housing assignment and it said that I was waitlisted, I was mad and so was my roommate,” sophomore Omar Attias said. “It was frustrating because we didn’t know if we should’ve started searching somewhere else to live in.”
After receiving his wait list notification, freshman Ben Heldman went to GW Housing Program’s office to seek out a housing assignment.
“I stood outside the housing office for about three hours looking for someone submitting a housing cancellation form, so that I could put my name and information on their form so I could be put into the place where that person was initially assigned,” Heldman said.
Freshman Will Haynes said while the process was frustrating, the guarantee that he would receive housing was comforting.
“I was originally upset about not having a housing assignment while everyone else had received notification of where they would be living next year,” Haynes said. “After calling GW Housing, I learned that I was guaranteed housing, and [they] promised to try and place me and my requested roommate in the same room.”
