Due to the college’s tight budget and the number of vacant rooms available in other dorms, it was decided that closing Carle Hall would be the most cost-efficient decision.

Along with the decision to close Carle Hall, Monadnock was chosen to remain open as a first-year dorm, some of Holloway Hall’s rooms were turned back into triples and the Living Learning Commons (LLC) is booked to full capacity.

The Associate Dean of Students and Director of Residential Life Kent Drake-Deese said the size of the first-year class was the reasoning behind closing Carle Hall.

He said after first-year students were assigned residence halls, there were 49 additional students not placed. Those students could have been placed in Carle Hall, but Drake-Deese said the KSC President’s Cabinet decided that was not an efficient use of resources.

Jake Paquin / Photo Editor

“The options were to place those 49 students in Carle Hall, which has a capacity of over 300 students, or triple some rooms in Holloway,” Drake-Deese stated. “We also could have added the 133 students in Monadnock to the 49 additional students and put them in Carle Hall which would have closed Monadnock,” he added.

However, Drake-Deese said this would leave Carle Hall with only a 60 percent occupancy rate, which, he said, is not worth the cost of keeping it open.

The President’s Cabinet also concluded that closing Carle Hall and booking the other buildings to full capacity would be the fiscally responsible thing to do.

However, he claims that this decision does not have to do with the college’s budget. “Operating in a fiscally responsible manner is always very high on our agenda, so I would not say that this decision was driven by the budget for this particular year.”

First-year residents in the LLC and Holloway have shared their experiences living in those fully-booked dorms.

First-year student Megan Titus is living in the LLC, which she said is “mostly nice.” However, she said, “I don’t think it’s very clean; we have a lot of fire drills and sometimes the showers only give you cold water.”

First-year student Zachary Shroyer is living in Holloway and said he enjoys living there, despite the amount of people that live there. “You don’t really notice how many people are living around you. During quiet hours, it’s typically quiet like it’s supposed to be,” he said.

First-year student Emily Dipietro is also living in Holloway, but in one of the triple rooms. She said, “I love my roommates and we all get along really well. The rooms are built for triples in the first place — if they were only built for doubles, it’d be much harder.”

When asked if booking first-year dorms to full capacity would affect living conditions, Drake-Deese said, “I have no concerns whatsoever about that influencing living conditions in that building.  It is a great building that is designed to provide service and support to the building at 100 percent of capacity. If anything, I feel it will be better, as a full building provides a more vibrant community environment socially and academically.”

Katie Jensen can be contacted at kjensen@kscequinox.com