Director of Housing and Dining Mark Hudson recently sat with the Stevenson Hall General Assembly to discuss the possibility of Eastern sophomores being allowed to live in Stevenson Hall.

As of right now sophomore transfer students have the option to live in the building but not sophomores who were already Eastern students.

Hudson said the community at Stevenson has seen some changes to the student make up in recent history.

“Stevenson Tower has been an upperclassmen environment for many decades and three or four years ago I was noticing that we were having a little more space available in that building so I went three or four years ago to the hall council and talked to them about having incoming transfers to be able to be there and not based on having to be juniors or seniors but even if they were coming in as sophomores and do that,” Hudson said.

Hudson said he had a similar conversation when he discussed changing the rules to allow the transfer students as he did last week to allow all sophomores.

“We had a big discussion about it, and they were worried about how that was going to affect their environment and all that,” Hudson said. “I understand that totally; I was an RA in that building for three years (so) I have a very strong appreciation for that environment, but they agreed and we did it and everything went fine. We do indeed have a number of sophomore transfers that live in the building and it seems like it’s going fine.”

Hudson said the reason for allowing the students is because he wanted to be fair to students who had already gone to Eastern and lived on campus and needed to fill space.

“As I’ve continued to look at the numbers, there’s still space in that building so I always felt a little guilty that we allow sophomores to be in the building that are transfer students but don’t allow our own sophomores to go in that building,” Hudson said.

The building would still be assigned by the date of when students applied so upperclassmen students would still have priority over underclassmen.

Hudson said regardless of what the final decision is his commitment is to ensuring students enjoy their on-campus living environments.

“I want them to know that we’re listening and we want to take into account their feelings about it and we did that,” Hudson said.

Melissa Harrison, a junior elementary education major, does not currently live on campus but has before. Harrison was a transfer sophomore and said given that she had the option to live in Stevenson as a sophomore she feels that all sophomores should have that option if there is enough space to allow it.

“Whenever I was transferring in I was like ‘I’m not living in a dorm’ like no offense to the dorms or anything but I’m not a huge sharing of my space. I like my solitude of being able to go in my own room and have my own space and dorms were just not an option for me whatsoever,” Harrison said.

Corryn Brock and Hannah Shillo can be reached at 581-2812 or at [email protected]