At the start of every new semester, students are forced to think about the future. Advising sessions for fall 2013 are scheduled beginning in January, people start leasing apartments as early as a year in advance, and UA Housing hosts recontracting room selections for the 2013-2014 school year during the first week of February. With all the chaos of returning to campus and starting new classes, the additional stress of figuring out where to live is a particularly unwelcome guest.

With the continued increase in freshman enrollment, the University has employed a set of new changes in their current housing system aimed at better accommodating the rapidly expanding student body, including the almost 6,000 plus freshmen that will begin their education at The University of Alabama come fall 2013. But the better question is, will this new system benefit those of us who have already started down the road to “finish in four?”

The University has sent out a myriad of emails emphasizing that the “demand for housing will be greater than available space” and explaining that priority will go to incoming freshmen and students on housing scholarships. Simply put, students currently living on campus who wish to remain on campus next year could potentially find themselves homeless when notifications for recontracting are sent.

Additionally, housing options in Harris, Somerville and the engineering portion of Bryant will be restricted to freshmen in the fall, and the Ridgecrest communities will only be open to honors students. With these new restrictions, hundreds of students will potentially be displaced, unable to continue living in the dormitories that they became accustomed to as their homes.

As a university that places a considerable emphasis on making its students feel at home as part of the Capstone community, these new changes in the UA housing system seem to disregard the needs and desires of its current students in order to make room for new students on campus.

Perhaps the students who are left with the shortest end of the stick under the new housing policy are those who currently live in traditional style dorms. Not only will the majority of traditional-style dormitories go to incoming freshmen, but students who currently live in these dorms will no longer be eligible to apply to live in suite-style dorms including those in Lakeside, Riverside, Ridgecrest or Presidential Village. With these new limitations, the only viable options for housing seem to be off-campus.

And while the University continues to urge us to “explore off-campus housing options” by hosting multiple off-campus housing fairs offering free T-shirts and koozies galore, they have made it nearly impossible for others to live off campus by choosing not to lease and manage apartments at East Edge and the Bluff. This means students on housing scholarships, many of who currently live off campus in spaces managed by the University at East Edge or the Bluff will be forced to return to an already full campus in the fall.

While students often choose to move to off-campus houses or apartments after their freshman or sophomore year, there are an equal number of students who would prefer to remain on campus during their entire education at the University.

The very benefits that the University lists as the reason for its requirement that all students live on campus during their freshman year are enough to make some students want to remain living on campus even after their freshman year.

The University of Alabama has always been an institution that prides itself on giving its students all the personal care and attention of a small college while also providing the opportunities and course variety of a large university. However, the new UA housing policy, while it may be a practical solution to make room for new students, is certainly not in line with the University’s promise to make student at feel right at home.

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Tara Massouleh is a freshman majoring English and journalism. Her column runs biweekly on Thursdays.