By If you think having one roommate was bad enough, think again.
According to Director of Cal State Long Beach Housing and Residential Life Carol Roberts-Corb, approximately 100 rooms in Beachside College have been modified to accomodate three people.
The rooms were modified to address increased housing demand.
In order to fit the 100 additional students, officials added an extra bed and desk to each of the rooms.
One of our major concerns about the Beachside College dorm situation is that residents were not notified about their additional roommates until the second or third week of August.
In addition, we are shocked that housing officials offered returning Beachside residents incentives like a $275 Beach Club card to cancel their housing contracts.
The incentives offered to students who canceled their contracts — which included a free parking pass and priority status for future on-campus housing — signaled that Housing and Residential Life was desperate to make room for students.
Roberts-Corb said the Beachside College situation is not “the norm” and that oftentimes students cancel their housing contracts during the summer months.
Regardless, we think students should have been notified earlier that they would certainly have two roommates.
We are also surprised that approximately 100 rooms were affected by this change.
In fairness, however, students in the triple-occupancy dorms received a 13 percent discount on their room rates, according to an email sent to Beachside residents from Housing and Residential Life.
Even with the discount, the uncomfortable living situation in Beachside College could cause friction.
Moving into the dorms and learning to build relationships with new roommates is already hard enough. Adding a third person to the mix could make the situation worse.
If CSULB Housing and Residential Life knew beforehand of a likelihood that there would be even more competition for dorming this year, it should have notified residents earlier.
We hope this will not be part of a future trend where Housing and Residential Life officials regularly assign three students to a room.
Overbooking and persuading students to cancel their housing agreements should not become standard procedure for CSULB Housing and Residential Life.
We hope the students living in the triple-occupancy dorms will not be severely affected. No discount can make people get along better.
