Residence Life recently announced that they will not be offering single rooms in the St. Joe’s dorm building, starting in the fall.

This change in the dorm room set-up is mainly due to the new addition of sports teams, including football, women’s ice hockey, and track and field. The idea with this is to increase availability with dorm space, to allow the incoming freshman and transfer students to live on campus and not have to worry about housing issues in the upcoming semester, Grace Adams, Interim Director of Residence Life, said.

Adams mentioned that this has not been the only reason for change in the housing selection process in recent years.

“The pandemic and amount of space was the impact changing how housing selection has been conducted the last two years,” she said. “The decision to not offer singles at housing selection was in anticipation that we may have a higher number than normal of incoming students and will need the potential for full occupancy between all buildings”.

St. Joe’s dorm rooms are already quite small, and students who have their own room enjoy having their own space to themselves.

“There are always growing pains with change,” Adams said. “Our hope is to thoroughly train our staff in the fall to be prepared for the possibility of increased tension or mental health concerns. While St. Joseph Hall rooms are not as big or as new as Trinity Hall, they are still larger than a handful of options at other schools in Western New York. St. Joseph Hall is on our list to make improvements and part of doing that is getting feedback from students who live there for what would be most beneficial.”

Residence Life is allowing students to join a waitlist, and depending on availability, may be permitted to reside in their own space, but there is no guarantee. The waitlist determination is based on student status, as well as credit hours achieved by the next semester, Adams said.

The Resident Assistants (RA’s) in each of the dorm buildings will continue to reside in their own space, as ‘it is important for their role and their mental health’.

Adams also mentioned that there have been concerns about not offering singles for the next academic year and are willing to take feedback under consideration for future processes and will make adjustments as needed.

“We hope to take the student insight and perspective to apply positive change and improvements over the next few years”.