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news
Housing alternatives
for students sought
By Kimberly Pasquis
On-line Forty-Niner
With the number
of freshmen being admitted into Cal State Long Beach still
increasing, school officials are seeking new locations to
build student housing in order to meet the student demands.
Last year approximately
6,000 students applied for dorm housing and only 1,827 were
accepted.
Currently, negotiations
are underway to lease land with the Veteran's Hospital, which
would serve as a new location for on-campus apartments, according
to Stan Olin, interim director of Housing and Residential
Life.
"There have been
many months of exploratory conversation with the VA hospital,"
Olin said. "We are hoping to have a cooperative venture
with them."
Using the land
that the Housing Office on Earl Warren Drive currently stands
on has been discussed among campus officials, but concentration
is focused on negotiations with the VA Hospital. The
land provided would be a prime location for students since
they would be located on upper campus across from the Liberal
Arts buildings.
Proposals have
been sent to Washington D.C. to be reviewed by veteran's federal
agencies. Scott Charmack, associate vice president of
Physical Planning and Facilities Management, said that the
VA Hospital has been very cooperative in discussion.
"There is a lot
at the federal level that we need to deal with," Charmack
said. "They have been easy to work with but we have to fit
within a national scope."
The Veterans Administration
needs to assess services its patients need and what and where
services need to be provided if there is extra land.
Five years ago
the dorms were only 60 percent full. Armando Contreras,
executive assistant to CSULB President Robert Maxson, said
that they are waiting to see a clear pattern in the increased
amount of freshmen to make sure that building new dorms is
a viable investment for the university. The continuing increase
of the freshman class has caused the university to take a
new stance on acceptance procedures for freshmen.
Maxson described
a plan for "Enrollment Management" in his convocation
speech this year. Contreras said this plan would give all
freshmen living in the local area priority admission to the
University as long as they meet the standards.
This year the freshman class has an enrollment of approximately
4,400 students, the largest freshman class ever. There
was a 20 percent increase in the number of applications from
last year.
The Chancellor's
Office approved Enrollment Management, which will keep more
stringent control on the size of the freshman class. This
plan could have a drastic effect on the number of applicants
for student housing.
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