Administrators want Central Campus to be home to juniors returning from abroad next semester—but those feelings are not necessarily mutual.
This year, 220 students applied to live off campus for the second half of their junior years, but just 66 were granted permission by the University, Linda Moiseenko, manager for Duke community housing, wrote in an e-mail.
Although many juniors returning from Fall study abroad programs apply each year to live off campus in the Spring, Residence Life and Housing Services requires all students to live on campus for three years unless they receive an exemption.
But some juniors have said they were informally assured that they would be able to live off campus in the Spring by RLHS and put money down for apartments before leaving the country. When official decisions were released in mid-October, many students were surprised that they had not been granted an exemption.
But RLHS officials said students should not assume they will be granted exemptions until they are officially notified, even if last year few students were denied permission to live off campus. This year, a number of beds remain available on Central Campus for the Spring, and RLHS must fill them because it depends on the revenue they generate, according to Moiseenko.
“What is important for students to understand is they should not expect automatic release by entering the lottery based on previous years’ lottery results,” she wrote.
But junior Sarah Krueger said that she was encouraged to pursue off-campus living options by RLHS officials before she ultimately signed a lease.
“Prior to going abroad, I called RLHS multiple times to talk to them about the off-campus lottery process,” Krueger wrote in an e-mail Tuesday. “Every time, I was led to believe that being released from the on-campus housing requirement was very probable, in fact, almost certain. They even went so far as to encourage me to sign an off-campus apartment lease and put down a deposit, which I did at West Village.”
Krueger and a friend were able to find an apartment of the size they wanted in West Village for less than it costs to live on Central. In preparation for the Spring, Krueger bought furniture for her new living space.
Other juniors understood the danger of assuming they would be granted an exemption but decided to risk losing their deposits on apartments instead of trying to search for vacant off-campus housing in the Spring.
“I fully understood the off-campus lottery process, but I made those plans based on previous years in which the majority of returning abroad students [got] released from housing,” junior Caroline Long wrote in an e-mail Tuesday. “Since each incoming freshman class is growing in size and... almost everyone was released last year—I assumed my chances of [winning] the off-campus lottery were high.”
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