Extended Housing explained

Extended House has provided space for a record number of freshmen.

By Brenden Neville

Published Aug. 29, 2008

For the students who are living in the new extended housing system at Campus View and Campus Lodge apartments this year, the phrase "dorm life" might take on a new meaning.

This was a record year for freshmen enrollment at MU, with 5,812 new students joining the school, and the Department of Residential Life has had to look outside campus to accommodate.

Not only is this year a record-breaker for incoming freshmen, a large number of returning students have renewed their contracts with Residential Life.

Contract renewals by returning students have increased by 40 percent this year in comparison to last year.

"This year was an anomaly," Residential Life Director Frankie Minor said.

Minor said the problem of overpopulation at MU was not fully realized until the deadline for application-fee refunds in May. At that point, anyone who had applied to MU would no longer receive an application free refund if they decided not to attend MU.

When no room was available in the past, Minor said, students have been housed at Stephens College or in residence halls originally scheduled to close. These options were not available this year.

With many more students on their way than MU could handle on campus, Residential Life began looking for alternatives.

Minor said off-campus housing should have the capacity to fit at least 700 students, include furnished rooms and offer an established transport system for students to reach campus.

The search was eventually narrowed to Campus Lodge and Campus View, and Residential Life signed master leases with each complex.

The university now holds 460 rooms at Campus Lodge, now called Mizzou Quads, and 240 rooms at Campus View, now called Tiger Diggs.

Every student housed at the extended campus lodgings will have a room to themselves, with prices comparable to living in an on-campus, double suite-style room in the College Avenue Dorms.

A room at Mizzou Quads costs $5,300, not including the required meal plan, and Tiger Diggs costs $4,550. A double suite at College Avenue Hall costs $5,400, and a single suite costs $6,570.

Freshman physics major Seth Kehoe moved in at the Mizzou Quads apartments two weeks ago.

Kehoe said during the first couple of days, the buses to campus were not completely reliable, but that they are getting better.

Minor said Residential Life was initially worried about losing the sense of community students get at the dorms, but Kehoe thinks otherwise.

"We have our own little community up here," he said.

According to Kehoe, his parents are also happy to have him in an apartment instead of a typical residence hall room.

The contract MU holds with Campus View and Campus Lodge is for this academic year, but Minor said an extension is not out of the question.

"Uniformly the response has been positive," he said.