Campus Crunch

Students are overbooked and underbunked

"Two's company, three's a crowd," the cliche goes--especially, as claustrophobic college students are learning this fall, when schools shoehorn three roommates into quarters meant for two. College dorms, of course, have been crowded for years. But no one was expecting a bulge this year. Scared by the imminent end of the baby boom, cost-conscious colleges, like airlines overbooking, vastly overaccepted students last spring in an effort to insure enough. When fewer freshmen than usual decided to switch schools at the last minute--coupled with an unexpected back-to-campus movement by upperclassmen newly eager for the convenience of dorms--colleges wound up with too many bodies and too few bunks. Some results: barracks-style living, in which students are forced to double up or bed down in hastily converted storerooms or noisy antechambers.

Many a student--and many a paying parent--is outraged over the housing pinch. "It's impossible to study here," complains Dan Rossberger, a Cornell freshman living in a study lounge with four others. Meanwhile 200 Boston University students, assigned to three decrepit buildings hastily leased by the school, say they must try to study while cockroaches dart across their feet, workmen fix plaster above their heads and prostitutes ply their trade near by.

By and large, administrators have taken the students' plight philosophically. Not so, however, at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., which has been forced to house students in motel rooms near campus until new dorms are finished. As a result, 105 George Mason students are enjoying maid service and color TV. The school's tab? Over $1,000 a day.

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