With fall semester underway, more than 2,500 on-campus residents have moved into the University of St. Thomas’ residence halls.

The 2010-2011 school year was difficult for Residence Life in terms of housing availability with the largest freshman class of 1,521 students. Since these students are now sophomores, Residence Life Director Aaron Macke said availability in on-campus apartment buildings and sophomore living experience accomodations was a concern.

“There’s a push by the neighborhood, and there’s a push by the university to try and create more spaces for sophomores to be in,” Macke said. “As much as we can provide different housing options in our system, the better off we are long term.”

Two off-campus options were added to the sophomore living experience. The first included renovations to the 2151 Grand Ave. apartment building, which now houses 52 sophomores compared to last year’s 40.

The second was the addition of 2085 Grand Ave., an apartment building already owned by the university prior to it becoming a residence hall. It houses 40 students with plans to expand in the future.

Sophomore Kate Pearson and her roommates made the 2151 Grand Apartments their first choice while residence hunting last semester. Despite the added apartments, Pearson said it was a difficult task to secure one.

“It was very stressful,” Pearson said. “We had the first time slot for housing sign-ups, but we ended up in (Residence) Life for over an hour trying to sort computer glitches out. We ended up having to kick some person out of a room because she signed up for a room but didn’t pull any roommates in.”

Although St. Thomas is looking to expand its sophomore living experience housing even further, no on-campus housing expansion into new buildings is in the near future.

“Even though last year was a bubble year for us, we don’t see growth in our first-year class sizes,” Macke said. “We’re going to not build new halls because the demand just isn’t there.”

To accommodate the class of 2014 during their freshman year, Brady and Dowling Hall lounges were converted into living spaces. Areas that were never used for living space were also converted, like Koch Lower Level Residence Hall, more commonly known as the barracks.

Macke said because this year’s freshmen class was a more typical size of 1,327 students, the lounges in both Brady and Dowling are communal lounges again.

One change, however, was worth keeping.

“Koch Lower Level Residence Hall is still in use this year,” Macke said. “The space got such favorable feedback from the students that were down there, and it’s a great space for housing, so we decided to turn it into a living-learning community this year.”

Briggs LeSavage can be reached at lesa4364@stthomas.edu.