Last week, John Dahdah '09 received a call from Vivian Ortiz '10, one of the resident counselors he oversees as an RC rep in Keeney Quadrangle.
"I said, 'Dahdah, you have to come down here right now,'" Ortiz said. "Usually I call him for bad things."
Dahdah found a group of students watching Super Tuesday coverage and hanging out together in the lounge, while other students baked cookies next door in the kitchen. This sight might be normal in many dorms, but up until last week, was unheard of in Ortiz's unit.
This year, nine lounges in freshman units - six in Keeney and three in Andrews Hall - started the fall semester as upperclass bedrooms. Though one will remain as a dorm room for the rest of the year, three were converted back to lounges in October and the remaining five became lounges last week.
Lounges get temporarily converted to dorm rooms every year, said Richard Bova, dean of the Office of Residential Life.
"We always have to employ lounges to ensure that all students who want housing have it," Bova said. Students returning from leave are among those who don't participate in the housing lottery but still need rooms. Administrators aren't sure how many students they'll have to accommodate until the beginning of August.
"We can know numbers but we can't specify identity," said Thomas Forsberg, associate director of housing and residential life.
Without important information like gender and class year, students cannot be placed in rooms until the last minute.
The lounges serve as "swing space," Bova added. ResLife needs the space "to make sure we can house everyone on opening day," Bova said. He said he works to move these students living in lounges to standard dorm rooms as quickly as possible.
"Everyone knows we need lounges," Dahdah said, adding that administrators "have been very supportive" in making lounges available.
Bova said officials in the Office of Campus Life and Student Services are notifying higher-level administrators of the lack of common space in dorms.
Bova and Forsberg said they will always keep at least some lounges open in each building. But Residential Peer Leaders in Keeney said spaces like Arnold Lounge are not adequate substitutes for hall lounges.
Arnold Lounge requires students to walk outdoors and is constantly being used for outside meetings. Though students find it a good study space, they are often in need of a place for small group gatherings, some said.
Jameson House resident Mady Heldman '11 uses Arnold, but said, "It's nicer to have a place to call our own."
RC Ben Lowell '10 said the small lounges increase the amount of casual socializing among residents. His unit received a lounge in October and had a pasta dinner in their new kitchen and lounge to celebrate.
"It's a place where I see a lot of people congregated at all times of the day," he said.
Heldman and her neighbors received a lounge last week, but prior to that, had no common spaces where the entire unit could gather.
"We weren't very united as a unit - we had to hang out in small groups in rooms," she said. "We were more of a group of cliques than a group as a whole"
Dahdah recalled having a pizza party in the hallway last year in his Keeney unit, which had no lounge. Ortiz said her residents used to congregate, and even study, in the laundry room.
She and her fellow RPLs have had a hard time procuring space for their programs, resorting to their community director's apartment and renting Arnold Lounge. Students were less likely to attend if the event was outside of the unit, she said.
"Now we don't have to drag people to events," she said. "We can say, 'It's right here!'"
Dahdah said he had the same difficulty last year with attendance when events were not easily accessible. But the lounges promise to be a helpful tool for his RPLs, he said.
"We no longer have to worry about making do," he said. "If the space is on the hall, people will come."
