World Youth Day – 19 students attend Catholic youth conference in Madrid
The
Living, page 6
BEACON
Vol. 113, Issue 1
Thursday September 1, 2011
THE UNIVERSITY OF PORTLAND’S STUDENT NEWSPAPER
www.upbeacon.net
‘Extended doubles’ cause overextended resources
Kevin Kadooka | THE BEACON
The second largest freshman class leads to more forced housing situations Sarah Hansell Staff Writer hansell14@up.edu When freshman Jasmine Wooton moved into her dorm room in Fields Hall last Thursday, she found herself in a converted study room with five beds, no sink and four new roommates. “I thought it would be terrible,” Wooton said. The girls living in the fourth floor Fields study lounge are five out of about 180 students living with more than one roommate this year, up from about 160 last year. “We just had to move everything around,” one of Wooton’s roommates freshman Tate Johnson added. “We got a really good view,” freshman Samantha Martin, one of the five roommates in Fields, said. Most of the “extended doubles” are regular dorm rooms in Fields, Schoenfeldt, Villa Maria, Christie and Shipstad halls. The study lounge in Fields housing five female students and a study lounge in Villa Maria housing four male students are the only rooms with more than three roommates. “If a Shipstad-sized hall fell out of the sky tomorrow, we could fill it,” Director of Residence Life
Mike Walsh said. This year UP received over 300 more applications than last year, and the Department of Admissions lowered its
“If a Shipstad-sized hall fell out of the sky tomorrow, we could fill it.”
Mike Walsh Director of Residence Life acceptance rate to 44 percent, one percent less than last year’s rate. Despite that decrease, this year’s freshman class is still the second largest in UP history. Last year’s freshman class is the largest. “The university is just in a growing stage right now,” Dean of Admissions Jason McDonald said. The increasing retention rate and a large number of returning students opting to live on campus also contributed to the high number of extended doubles, according to Walsh.
“Despite a couple of annoying rules, I think a lot of people realize it’s a lot better to live on campus in a lot of ways,” Walsh said. Walsh estimates no more than 10 to 20 students will leave this semester. This means few living situations are likely to open up before spring. “The reality is people are going to be in rooms like this until December,” Walsh said. Sharing a dorm room with two other roommates was not a part of the freshmens’ idea of life at UP. “It’s obviously not what we wanted,” freshman Sarah Hatfield, who lives in Shipstad Hall with two other roommates, said. “When I first found out over the summer that I had two roommates, I was like, ‘What?’” Despite initial anxiety, many freshmen seem unfazed, if not happy, about the situation. “It’s not that bad because the rooms are pretty big in Christie, and we’re pretty much always outside them,” freshman Max Bruett, who lives in Christie Hall with two other roommates, said. Another benefit to living in an extended double is the $750
Kevin Kadooka | THE BEACON
Kevin Kadooka | THE BEACON
See Freshmen, page 4
PilotsUP goes offline on first day Corey Fawcett Staff Writer fawcett13@up.edu
The first day of school brought problems for PilotsUP. The high number of students trying to access the website on Monday overwhelmed the storage area network (SAN), which connects PilotsUP with associated data. The site was taken offline for 15 minutes. “It was effectively down,” Jenny Walsh, the web and
administrative systems director, said. Over the summer, the IT team changed all on-campus kiosks to virtual desktops, meaning none of them have hard drives anymore. Students working away at the library, for example, are using only a screen and a mouse. The actual computer lies within SAN. All the logging in and out on Monday slowed the network down, according to Walsh. “Requests (to access
PilotsUP) kept lining up,” she said. The IT team fixed the problem by moving PilotsUP data to its second SAN, creating a fresh connection with no delay. “PilotsUP is really solid,” Walsh said. “We learned much more about the data needs on the SAN to make sure it doesn’t all get clogged in one pipe.” For more information about PilotsUP, see page 3
Talley Carlston | THE BEACON
Top picture: Originally a study hall in Fields Hall, the five-person room was converted to accommodate this year’s freshman class. Second from top: Freshmen Elise Nyland, Sarah Hatfield and Phevee Paderes converse in their forced triple in Shipstad Hall. Third from top: Freshmen Matthew McElreath, Max Bruett and Alvaro Garay play a video game in an “extended double” in Christie Hall. Bottom picture: An “extended double” in Shipstad Hall,where freshmen Sarah Hatfield, Elise Nyland and Phevee Paderes live.