Several Special Interest Houses are being relocated for the upcoming 2016-17 academic year to different college-owned spaces, including the Outdoor Education, ROTC, Phi Delta Theta and Kappa Alpha Theta houses.

According to Amanda George, assistant director of Residence Life and Housing, changes of this sort are common in the renewal process required for Special Interest Houses.

“As part of the renewal process, we ask each house to identify their preferences about what type of housing will work best for their house,” said George. “We use this information to help inform changes for the upcoming year.”

In addition to asking houses to identify living preferences, George said that the Housing staff constantly looks to improve their processes to best accommodate the class years of residents of these houses.

As of this semester, Residence Life and Housing has seen an increase in sophomores opting to live in Special Interest Houses for the upcoming academic year. Taking class years into consideration can often result in the redistribution of Special Interest Housing.

Despite the construction of the new dorm and subsequent demolition of the current ROTC house, there will not be any impacts on housing issues such as the lack of beds for students housed on campus during the 2015-16 academic year.

“Special Interest Housing or any changes to Special Interest Housing will not have an impact on the number of total beds. For the next academic year, we plan to only use the beds that are in our normalized occupancy,” said George. “We were able to go back to those numbers by allowing more rising seniors off-campus permission.”

Shifts and vacancies often occur within Special Interest houses prior to the beginning of the following year, but Housing will provide opportunities for the house to fill the vacancies, which should assist in the regulation of the bed to student ratio.