Crunch time

USM students are cramming, but not for exams

by Theresa Flaherty

PREP SCHOOL: workers touch up dorms in Portland Hall. To accommodate a growing student body and a tight housing market, the university plans to triple up students in double-occupancy dorm rooms.

The University of Southern Maine wants to boost enrollment, and recent efforts -- such as offering more on-campus programming, putting more money in financial aid, and bringing in a new

football team -- have been aimed specifically at attracting younger students, says university president Richard Pattenaude.

"We want to be attractive and meaningful to a very important group of students so they'll stay in Maine to go to school," explains Pattenaude. Plus, he says matter-of-factly, "universities are very tuition-driven. That's very important to our financial stability."

And the work is paying off. The university has seen its overall enrollment increase for the past several years -- with the number of younger students, or at least full-time undergraduates increasing by about 700 since 1995 and taking up a larger percentage of the overall enrollment -- and when students return next month numbers are expected to be even larger than last fall's high of 10,645 students. While this may be music to Pattenaude's ears, it begs the question: where will all these people live? Construction has begun on a new dorm on the Gorham campus, which will provide an additional 225 beds, but that won't be completed until the fall 2001 semester. With the vacancy rate in Portland hovering around 3 percent these days, the university is being forced to improvise solutions.

"Our first priority is to make sure everyone has a bed," says Sarah Holmes, an administrative assistant at Portland Hall, the university's dorm on Congress Street. This will be accomplished, in part, prison style, increasing the occupancy beyond what dorm rooms were meant to hold. "We have about nine triples, more if we need," says Holmes.

Such arrangements are expected to be temporary, she says, but nobody is really sure. "People cancel or they just don't show up," explains Holmes. "New and transfer students move in on September 2 and returning students on September 5."

The university has approximately 1400 beds. Portland Hall has 161 rooms ranging from singles to quads, some with kitchens, all with individual bathrooms. A typical double room measures 14 by 20 feet. Cost per semester ranges from $1409 to $1752 per person, depending upon the room. Students who have to triple up will receive a refund based on the amount of time they have to live in a triple.

Adding to the confusion are students from the Maine College of Art and Southern Maine Technical College, scheduled to begin moving in on August 25. Forty of Portland Hall's beds are reserved for MECA students and another 53 for students attending SMTC. USM bills MECA and SMTC the same room rates they charge USM students. Like USM students, they may have to triple up.

In addition to squeezing them into Portland Hall, the university is trying other methods of helping students obtain housing. A list of local housing is available at Portland Student Life in the campus center in Portland. Katherine Wright, an administrative assistant with Portland Student Life, has been meeting with local landlords and property managers in an attempt to add more properties to their housing list.

"Landlords don't like to rent to students," she says. "That's not new. What is new is that there is just no housing available, so the landlords can really pick and choose."

Wright says she's developing programs that she hopes will make students more attractive to landlords, such as seminars on renting and being a responsible tenant.

"It's a fine line we're walking," she says. "What the university doesn't want to get into is being responsible to landlords for students. We want to help the students as much as possible but we don't want to be financially responsible for them. I don't want to be the students' guarantor.

"It's a tough, tough market I'm afraid," she says. "That's not to say students are not finding housing, but it's more a word-of-mouth kind of thing."

Kevin Granahan, a junior computer science major, agrees.

"I gave up on classified ads a long time ago," he says. "I was actively looking for six to eight weeks, calling 10 to 15 places a day. I called one guy on a Sunday morning at 9:30 and he had already had over 100 calls. He wouldn't even take my name." On the rare occasion he was able to get an address, Granahan says, the place was usually a "dump."

"One place was pretty nice, it was a nice address, but all the windows were broken out," he says. "Another one had a screened porch that had been walled in to make another room, and it smelled like dogs and cats had been peeing in there for a year."

Granahan, who has been living at a friend's house in South Portland, began networking with friends, people he knew who managed property, anyone he could think of, to try and find a place. This week he moves in with someone he works with.

Granahan considers himself lucky. At 36, he is older than the traditional student and has rented before. That's not the case with a lot of students, especially not the new breed of younger students the university is trying to attract. Peter Wovkonish, president of the Greater Portland Housing Association, doesn't hold much hope for them. "Certainly, it's more challenging for those that have no background," he says.

Kristin Draper, a junior, learned this during her recent search for an apartment in Portland.

"One landlord refused to let me apply because I lacked references," she says. "Is it my fault I have only lived with my parents and in a dorm?"

As unimpressed as some landlords may have been with her lack of references, Draper was equally unimpressed with what many had to offer.

"The average single bedroom, including utilities, was about $600, and trust me, the condition they were in was nothing to brag about," Draper says.

Wright believes educating younger students about how to be a good tenant might help. Younger students may sometimes be perceived as irresponsible. Granahan says being older and maintaining both a job and a full-time class load showed a level of maturity that worked in his favor.

"I think if I were 20 and looking for a place I would have had more problems," he says.

While the university focuses now on boosting enrollment, a consideration of just how much they can grow the student body is beginning to enter some people's minds.

"The physical plan is gonna cap it," says Steven Rand, the university registrar, referring simply to the lack of physical space the university owns. The new dorm on the Gorham campus is actually being built where a parking lot used to be. (The university doesn't have enough parking spaces to accommodate students either, by the way). "We can't hold more than will fit in our current plan."

In the future, it may be necessary to rethink the arrangements with MECA and SMTC. Last winter, the university informed International Youth Hostels that there would no longer be beds available in Portland Hall during the summer months, due to the high demand for housing. According to Pattenaude, the school's president, the university may eventually cap enrollment, but for now the plan is to keep growing. Pattenaude says the university plans to request funds to build more classrooms on the Portland campus in the upcoming legislative session.

Theresa Flaherty can be reached at theresaflaherty@earthlink.net.