The majority of this week’s Student Senate meeting focused on the decisions made by the Department of Housing and Residential Life (HRL) regarding on-campus priority housing for next year.
“[HRL] had to make a lot of adjustments in housing over the last year due to COVID,” Minor said. “I am sorry for that, if [the department’s decisions] directly affected you, but it was what we had to do to keep the institution running.”
Minor told the Senate that he had announcements regarding housing priority for next year. He said that rooms designed as doubles but being used triples are going back to serving as two-person rooms, meaning triples will no longer exist. He mentioned that there would be reduced housing capacity because of this change, however.
“There will be a net loss of about 900 spaces on campus, about 15 percent from what was started with before COVID hit,” Minor said.
He explained how he and colleagues have had to decide who should receive priority for housing. Incoming students who apply by a deadline will be guaranteed on-campus housing. After these students receive housing, there will be about 2,000 vacancies left for students.
“The challenge we face with this is that we have a demand of about 2,400 to 2,800 students,” he said. “We are not going to be able to accommodate all the students who wanted to live on campus.”
Minor emphasized that URI is going to do its best to help as many people as possible with housing. To best house the entire student body, HRL is going to do its best to have 100 percent occupancy on campus.
Student Senate asked Minor questions about these decisions and voiced their opinions on the matter. Director of Information Sarah Margolin responded to Minor by addressing the lack of attention current upperclassmen were receiving because of this decision.
“In order for seniors to graduate on time, some of them need to be on campus,” she said. “I think some action needs to be taken to support them.”
Chairman Christopher Bove agreed with Margolin and voiced his own concerns.
“I think it’s important to recognize that [the University’s] current seniors and juniors have already invested a lot into this university and deserve support as well,” he said.
Responding to these concerns, as well as other questions about these decisions, Minor suggested that a hybrid of credit-based priority and a first come first serve priority be used to fill the rest of the housing.
“If [the Senate] can reach a decision of what [the Senate] thinks is the right way, I will try to implement that as best I can,” Minor said.
After this discussion with the Senate, Minor also brought up a new job for anyone interested in assisting with deliveries for students in isolation.
“If you’re looking to earn some money, we need some delivery runners,” he said.
Students currently in isolation at the hotels or in Brookside are ordering food but cannot leave their rooms to pick it up.
“We are having some gaps in service, and we currently don’t offer that service at Brookside,” Minor said. “We need students who’d be willing [to help us out.]”
Anyone interested in this position can contact Deborah Bergner.
After Minor’s time with the Senate this week, the Campus Affairs Committee provided updates on their two projects. Chairman Michael Bentley had news on both of the projects.
“For the SPIN project, we have still been compiling results from the survey,” he said. “It’s important that we get as many results as possible because I want to take this to Senior Leadership for the University.”
A representative from SPIN will be attending next week’s Student Senate meeting to address any questions and concerns within the Senate.
According to Bentley, the menstrual product project is going strong as well. He also announced which company the committee would be partnering with.
“The company that we’re going to go with is Aunt Flow,” Bentley said. “They seem like a really great company … I think that this would be a great partnership to have.”
President Austyn Ramsay swore in Evelyn Olivos during this week’s meeting to her new position as Off-Campus Representative.
The next Student Senate meeting will be held on March 2 at 6:30 p.m.