By Diego Ruiz

This year, rising sophomores will have two new options at room draw: George Drayper Dayton and Kirk. Rooms in both residence halls will be allotted for sophomores to help ease a potential housing crunch among underclassmen, Res Life Operations Manager Kathy McEathron said. She said she did not yet know how many spaces would be set aside.

Kirk and GDD have traditionally been upperclassmen dorms. This year, Res Life moved some sophomores to Kirk who had initially been placed in Dupre to make room for the extra freshmen in the class of 2013.

“We like to try and have all our sophomores living in the same area,” McEathron said. “But next year, that won’t be possible.”

McEathron said she prefers to keep sophomores together because it is easier to target programming specifically for them and “keep the sophomore connection.”

The current freshman class has 559 students. Housing them solely in the traditional sophomore dorms – Bigelow, 30 Mac, Wallace, and Dupre – would not leave enough space for next year’s freshmen in Dupre.

According to McEathron, Admissions has told Res Life that it is aiming for the class of 2014 to have between 475 and 500 students. This would be a normal amount for Macalester: between 2004 and 2008-before this year’s unusually large class, the average number of freshmen enrolled was 488.

McEathron said she would not know if spaces such as the Turck Two study lounges would have to be used as bedrooms again until the final tally of new freshman is released over the summer.

While McEathron said housing the large class last year “wasn’t horribly difficult,” she is hoping that the Admissions projection is on track this year.

If another larger than expected class decides to attend Macalester, “it would be like an emergency situation,” said McEathron. “We would look at alternative housing for juniors and seniors.”

However, McEathron stressed that this is an unlikely scenario, and said it should not dissuade rising juniors and seniors from applying to live on campus.

“We want juniors and seniors on campus; we want to accommodate them; we want to fill our halls for next year,” said McEathron.