MIKE CHIEN First-year undeclared students (l-r) Jaye
Membreve, Mylene Ranches and Leslie Chan stay up late in their room
in Sproul Hall. Housing officials plan to increase the number of
triples again next year.
By Jamie Hsiung
Daily Bruin Reporter
Even more residence hall students will find themselves squeezed
in with two other roommates next year, should housing officials
approve a suggestion made by members of the Undergraduate Students
Association Council to increase the number of triple rooms.
If the number of triples is going to increase next year, the
housing administration should lower the cost of these rooms, said
Erik Sun, a second-year electrical engineering student living in a
Hedrick Hall triple.
“Since more students are going to be suffering, we might
as well pay even less,” he said.
Sun’s room showed the “suffering” he’s
been through as a result of living in a room originally meant to
house only two people: a pile of textbooks, CD-Rs and an open bowl
of Top Ramen noodles clutter the floor beside his desk.
While triple rooms abound today, there was once a time of
residence hall life without two roommates.
Students following the 2002 Winter Olympics from their dorms
might not realize that the 1984 Summer Olympics could be the reason
they’re watching it with two roommates instead of one.
When the ’84 Olympics transformed the northwest
residential halls into an Olympic Village, 4,000 athletes and
coaches were housed in the six dorms, said John Sandbrook,
assistant provost of the College of Letters & Science.
In a situation much like today’s, there were more bodies
than rooms, a problem that prompted the Olympic Organizing
Committee to create triple rooms to accommodate the athletes.
And one athlete found herself squeezed into a room with three
other roommates.
“Four athletes to a room was a bit much,” Olympic
rower Wendy Green was quoted as saying in an Aug. 13, 1984 issue of
the Daily Bruin. Green stayed at Rieber Hall.
Sandbrook doesn’t imagine that many of the athletes
complained of the cramped quarters, noting that the athletes
wouldn’t be in their rooms long enough to run into any
serious problems.
Michael Foraker, the director of housing and hospitality, said
the ’84 Olympics did not directly result in UCLA placing
students in triples.
Students were assigned to triples beginning in 1988 when
Hedrick, Rieber, Dykstra and Sproul Halls started undergoing
seismic strengthening over a three-year time period, Foraker
said.
This seismic strengthening ““ a course of action designed
in order for the residence halls to be able to better withstand
earthquakes ““ occurred in phases. Half of a building was
emptied while the contractor worked on the unoccupied end.
Approximately 400 students were moved and distributed among the
remaining residence halls, creating the triple-room phenomenon
experienced by many today.
Foraker said that while the ’84 Olympics did not directly
lead to housing students in triples, the Games showed that triples
could become a legitimate possibility for the future if there was a
space crunch.
“As a result of the 1984 Olympics, some degree of tripling
was a workable situation when demand exceeded supply.” said
Foraker.
Today, 46 percent of the rooms in residence halls house three
students.
According to Angela Marciano, the associate director of housing
and hospitality services, there have been 600 to 1,200 triples in
the residence halls for the last five years. As for the next five
years, housing officials aren’t sure how many triples there
will be.
“It will depend on inventory ““ if new housing is
built, how much is built, and how many people want to live on
campus,” Marciano said.
“Our aspiration is: only those kids who want triples will
get triples,” she added.
The main negative consequence is lack of privacy, Marciano
said.
Students actually living in the triples have some opinions of
their own to add to the discussion.
“It affects education,” said first-year undeclared
student Matt Guibert, who requested a triple because it was
cheaper. Residence hall doubles cost nearly $1,000 more than
triples for one academic year.
“Back home, you got to study on your own space. Over here,
you have to communicate with your roommates … there’s
always people around, so it’s hard to concentrate. At least
with a double, there’s one less person.”
Though Marciano said that there’s “been no
information of safety problems associated with triples,”
students beg to differ.
“I hate the bunk beds,” said Cindy Wada, a
first-year undeclared student. “I keep hitting my
head.”