Complaints and conflicts about living off campus may be reaching an all-time high this year, as internet issues, Convo crowds and housing hazards continue to build.

Something that may assuage students’ uproars temporarily is the fact that this year, juniors were allowed to apply for senior housing.

“Ashland University is a residential university, meaning housing criteria is such that the majority of our undergraduates live on-campus,” Director of Residence Life Cat Geletka said in an email. “One of our goals as a department that honors this policy is to provide upper-class students with more apartment-style housing options.”

Ashland acquired apartments on College Avenue, which made 40 additional off-campus spots available.

“Last year, we had a large graduating class; therefore 2 rounds of lottery were all that were necessary,” Geletka wrote. “This year, after collecting all of the applications, we had additional apartments available. The question presented to Student Senate, as well as the President’s Cabinet, was: Do we allow all seniors to apply for a third round, or do we keep criteria and open the housing up to juniors? The decision agreed upon was allowing individuals with no level one student conduct sanctions, a GPA of 2.5 or higher, and at least 60 credits completed by the end of spring to apply.”

Geletka said that the change most likely didn’t have to do with seniors having a lacking GPA or disinterest from seniors in apartments. Instead, it’s probably that this change came about because of a smaller senior class size and the amount of apartments available.

The alcohol policy for the apartments is not changing or being affected. The rule for seniors is that everyone who lives in the apartment must be 21 in order to have alcohol allowed in their apartment. The same rule applies for juniors.

There is a possibility that this is a one-time-thing; the future about juniors in senior apartments is not certain.

“This is difficult to predict because there are many variables,” Geletka wrote, “but with the addition of the College Avenue Apartments, additional 2-person apartments added within residents halls, the College of Nursing apartments, and our continued efforts to work towards providing additional apartment style housing options to students with 60 credits, if I had to say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ I would say ‘yes.'”

Originally, there was a rule stating that a student could only live in senior housing for three semesters; that way if the senior had to stay on for an extra semester, they could still live in their apartment. Now, because juniors are settling into their apartments, the rule has been extended to four semesters.

There are many factors that go towards the final decision about who is and is not allowed to live in the senior apartments.

“Each group receives a quality point average score,” Geletka wrote. “This is determined by multiplying each group member’s GPA and earned credit hours…These four scores are added together and divided by four to get the quality point average score. All groups who apply are then ranked by these scores. The top 14 groups from the third round of selection will be offered an apartment and each group will select an apartment in order of their scores from highest to lowest.”

While it is not clear if juniors will always have the opportunity to live in senior apartments, for now some students have broken free from dorm room life.