Exams have started, leaves are falling, and many MSU students are still crowded into overbooked residence hall rooms.
Chuck Gagliano, assistant vice president for Housing and Food Services, said there are currently 130 over-assigned rooms.
"This isn't something that the university staff did, it's something that occurred," Gagliano said. "More people applied and were accepted, and there's all kinds of fallout from that."
University housing officials are telling students that relocation might take anywhere from two weeks to two months, he said.
Many of the 7,300 freshman this year were greeted with an extra roommate because of a larger-than-expected class size, he said.
"It should work itself through as we move through (the) semester," he said. "But the end result is there are not that many locations and too many residents."
Gagliano also said students in overbooked rooms will receive a pro-rated rebate at the end of semester. The rebate means that if a student stayed in the room for half of the semester, they would receive half of their total fee in a refund.
At the MSU Board of Trustees meeting on Friday, Gagliano announced there were 950 rooms overbooked in July.
In August, Angela Brown, director of University Housing, told The State News there were 300 overbooked rooms when students arrived on campus.
However, on Sept. 2, housing officials announced that 744 rooms were overbooked.
Of the current 130 overbooked rooms, there are 20 over-assigned for women and 110 for men.
Katherine Compton came to MSU in August to find two other roommates in her Snyder Hall second floor room.
After a week and a half, housing officials moved the no-preference freshman into a room changed from a Psychology Department office on Snyder's first floor.
"I was a little angry when we had to move everything again," she said. "It took a while to get the phone, and we don't have cable, but we do have AC."
Compton said University Housing gave her the option to move to the West Circle area during the first week, but she wanted to stay in the Mason, Abbot, Snyder and Phillips halls area. She received a $34 check from university housing for "being inconvenienced."
Mary Lou Heberlein, complex manager for Mason, Abbot, Snyder and Phillips halls area, said Compton is among 16 other overbooked Synder residents that were moved into basement and first floor offices to address residence hall overbooking.
The offices were converted to student rooms this year. The Psychology Department has since moved its offices into the Physics-Astronomy Building.
Ben Lott, a chemical physics senior, lives in a Wilson Hall single room. University housing gave him the option to move into university apartments with free first month's rent, or take on a temporary roommate and be refunded.
Lott said he doesn't know when he will get his single back.
"It's an indefinite temporary," he said. "It'll be two weeks this Thursday, (and) if it's extended beyond then, I'd have to talk to them because I was only refunded (for) this semester."
