By Nick Starling nstarling@nebraska.tv
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Students going to UNK this fall may feel the squeeze when they move into their dorms this semester.
No student living on campus will live alone, they will have at least one roommate.
It's because one of the main residence halls, Centinenial West Tower will be closed for renovations. It's part of an $18.5 million dollar project which includes upgrades to all dorms.
Leaving UNK officials finding more areas for these students to live.
Remodeling on of UNK's biggest residence halls will force hundreds of students to find other dorm to call home.
"We're taking 400 beds out of our mix obviously had an impact," said Dr. Tony Earls, director of student life at UNK.
An impact that puts up to three people in a room at certain dorms.
"We're using all of our facilities to meet demand," said Earls.
With more students living together in tighter quarters RA's will have to deal with more student conflicts.
"This year the RA training will include much more of an empahisis on conflict mediation training," said Earls.
Earls says around 44% of the residents living in the dorms this year are returning students.
One other item to throw into the situation is the number of international students finding their way to UNK.
"Within the last few weeks we had a number of international students sign up with us and we're very proud of our international recruitment," said Earls.
So far there are no plans to add more resident halls...just upgrade them.
They are working on a reduced rate for the students who will have to share their room. Right now they don't know how long this problem will last. They say hopefully just a few weeks and they are still getting housing applications.
There are roughly 2,000 students who live on campus this fall.
