Even with more than 830 new students on campus, according to Residence Life, everyone has a place to live.The number of lofted rooms (double-occupancy rooms that are reconfigured to hold three people) for first-year students has doubled since last year, to approximately 110, but no one seems to be complaining.

"We haven't had that many complaints about them," Rob Andrews, Associate Director of Residence Life, said about the unnatural triples.

Many Brandeis students have wondered about the large size of the new class and what impact it will have on housing. Residence Life was confident in its assessment of the issue.

"We have a close relationship with admissions," Andrews said, "and the University is working to make it a reasonable situation."

"There are many factors in determining class size," Andrews continued, "and housing is one of them."

The size of the Class of 2006, however, is already having an impact on housing. Because of the especially large number of first-year students, residence life is already planning to change the designations of buildings again next year.

Just this year, East Quad was redesignated a sophomore quad and North was made almost entirely first-year.

Upperclass students this year also faced housing problems. Although everyone who remained on the housing waiting list last year received a place to live, residence life had to open up areas in dorms not ordinarily used to do so. The basements of Shapiro, in Massell Quad, and Gordon, in North Quad, were converted into living spaces for some upperclass students.

Residence Life remains proud of their achievement. "We had over 300 people on the waiting list," Andrews said, "and we offered over 300 people a spot."

Many students, however, did not take what was offered to them, opting to live off campus. Andrews failed to understand why students would not take even temporary assignments. "You can always change second semester," he explained.

"Brandeis is not about the residence hall," Andrews added, "but the community in which you live."

"The community," he said, "is what makes people want to come here and stay here.