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The Rice Thresher
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by Elizabeth Decker thresher staff Martel College students living at Twenty-One Eleven Holly Hall next semester will be allowed to live four to a three-bedroom apartment instead of just three to help shorten the waiting list of students who did not get a room originally under the Martel Plan. The agreement was reached Friday during negotiations between Food and Housing Director Mark Ditman, Wiess College sophomore Ishmeal Bradley and Diane Lawson, the assistant vice president of Anterra, which manages the Holly Hall apartments. Bradley, who is transferring to Martel College, was selected by the Martel Parliament to work on the rooming situation at Holly Hall. Negotiations originally focused on increasing the number of rooms available to Martel students, which Lawson said was not possible. As a partial solution, Lawson agreed to allow four students to live in the three-bedroom apartments. Permitting five students to an apartment was discussed, but Lawson was concerned about possible parking shortages at the apartments. The fourth student will pay $150 a month in addition to the rents of $425 for each of the two master bedrooms and $350 for the smaller bedroom the other three students will pay. Students will give their portion of the rent directly to Holly Hall, but may divide rent and utilities among themselves however they see fit. Ditman said he thought Rice students would pay the fee and not try to get a fourth student in for free. "It has been my experience that Rice students have a well-developed sense of integrity and fair-play with matters of this nature," Ditman said. "I don't feel there needs to be anything specific in place to prevent 'unofficial' overcrowding." In total, Martel students will pay $1,350 for the three-bedroom apartments if they choose to live four to an apartment, but the list price for each apartment is $1,225. Bradley said the system will lower the individual student's rent, but still be advantageous to the management. "It's cheaper for everyone, but they still get a bigger profit in the end," Bradley said. However, Ditman said Holly Hall is taking a financial risk by leasing to Martel and will likely not profit from the additional rent paid by the fourth student. "I think what people don't understand is what a huge concession this is on Holly Hall's part, to do short-term leases, because what happens is at the end of these leases, they're hung with 19 vacant apartments in the middle of the winter," Ditman said. Ditman also explained that apartment managers incur additional costs every time they switch tenants, and Martel will create relatively high turnover costs by vacating 19 apartments at one time after only a four and a half month lease. Ditman said that while Holly Hall could take a short-term loss on the Martel Plan, they are hoping to be repaid with an increase in the number of Rice students renting from them in the future. "On the surface it looks like they're making this huge financial gain out of this deal, and I think realistically it's probably revenue neutral for them," Ditman said. "What they're leveraging is a longer-term relationship with Rice. What they're hoping is that it'll kind of become the preferred location, or the first place people consider from Rice." Students will be asked to volunteer to live with a fourth roommate, and no one will be forced to accept one, Bradley said. "I asked everyone, 'Do you mind sharing?'" Bradley said. "Some people said yes, they would mind sharing, some people have said, 'No, I would like to share.'" Bradley hopes to shorten the list from 35 to 30 people through this arrangement. For the other students on the waiting list unable to get a room at Holly Hall as part of the Martel Plan, Bradley suggested living there under the Rice plan that is open to all Rice students who have not yet made other arrangements. "Some of them have already made other plans. If they don't make it and they don't have plans, we are just encouraging them to go along with the Rice plan," Bradley said. "That would probably be the second-best option for them." Bradley said there were no other ways of improving the arrangements at Holly Hall to accommodate more Martelians. "We didn't really have any other options. The space we got at Holly Hall was all they were willing to give up at a particular moment in time. It's what they had open at the moment and what they were willing to give us for the semester," Bradley said. "You would think this school has enough money to do something, but that hasn't been an option, so from the students' point of view this is pretty much as much as we could have done." An additional outcome of the negotiations last Friday was a decrease in the holdover fee. Previously, Rice agreed to pay the equivalent of three months' rent for the apartments leased under the Martel plan if students needed to stay longer than arranged. Under the new agreement, Rice is only liable for one and a half months' rent, decreasing the fee from approximately $70,000 to $35,000. Ditman explained this was a show of confidence in the pace of Martel construction on Holly Hall's part. "I see that as an act of good faith on their part," Ditman said. Ditman said construction is still on schedule, and he does not anticipate having to pay the holdover fee. "You can have that holdover fee if you want, but it's not going to be exercised," Ditman said. "I'm very optimistic that everybody's going to do what they need to do, and it's just not going to be a problem." Ideally, Ditman said, the rooms at Martel will be ready before winter break for students to move their belongings in. "We're going to do everything we can to make sure the stars align and Martel doesn't come in late," Ditman said. "To me that's ideal, if some time during finals you can drop your stuff in your room. ... That's what we'll work towards." Bradley anticipates the transition back onto campus next winter will go smoothly despite the problems created by the shortage of space at Holly Hall. "We don't have a physical building yet, but we have the weekly meetings, we have the parliament meetings, we have officers, so we are coming together," Bradley said. "The transition will just be to an actual building, but most of the actual college spirit is already being put in place."
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