St. Thomas Residence Hall Association announced in an email this November that it will reserve 150 more beds in on-campus housing for current first-year students returning for fall 2019.

St. Thomas plans to move towards a two year on-campus residency requirement as they renovate and restructure campus housing in the next ten years. To do so, the university will no longer give housing priority to students with the most credits.

“This is something that we have been wanting to do and have been talking about doing,” said Aaron Macke, associate dean of students and director of Residence Life. “We just really need to start giving these first-year students more and better housing options for the second year.”

First-year students will now have the opportunity to choose from 700 beds in Flynn, Morrison or mid-campus Sophomore Year Experience apartments on Grand Avenue; leaving the remaining 200 beds for upper-division students.

Macke said that the university is not only working on enhancing first-year beds as part of the three year renovation plans announced Tuesday, but also continuing the student growth on campus beyond that first year in comparison to other peer universities like the Marquette University and Creighton University.

He said that there is comfort in knowing that the students can foster two years worth of connections on campus before moving out into the real world.

Providing only a brief description of the housing change in the initial email, upperclassmen students were confused and concerned by the lack of communication from the university, the amount of beds that will available and the ability to have a sufficient backup living solution because of it.

“I understand their vision and that other universities do it but we had the expectations of this is what our university is and (the university) suddenly changed it 2 weeks before (the application release),” senior Hunter Illsley said. “It is just a sudden uncertainty and another thing to worry about out of nowhere.”

Ava Diaz can be reached at diaz7981@stthomas.edu