The Department of Residential Life has not yet decided whether to continue housing three residents to a room in the Pentagon Residence Halls. ResLife began housing three people in some rooms in the Pentagon this year because of a record number of applicants. The department is evaluating whether to switch them back to two-person rooms next year, said Steve Waller, ResLife director. “We’re looking at the applications and seeing how it goes this semester,” Waller said. “We haven’t made a decision yet to discontinue it next year.”Housing three people to a room in the Pentagon is one of the things ResLife did “to accommodate more applicants,” Waller said. ResLife temporarily housed 26 students in common areas, including lounges and libraries, until the department could find permanent housing for them. ResLife turned away more than 200 applicants this year because of space constraints.Waller said the rooms in the Pentagon were designed to house three people. But because of a decline in housing demand in the ‘90s, ResLife reduced the number of residents in each room to two.Waller said the department has not determined whether to house two people per room because there aren’t many other options to house the extra residents.”Obviously if we don’t do it again next year, then there will be about 149 less beds for residents to live in next semester,” Waller said. “There’s nothing new coming online. There’s not an alternative for those 150 beds.”ResLife is evaluating the effectiveness of the three-person system to determine whether to continue it next semester.”We put a resident assistant in each stairwell that we have triples in, so we’re basically assessing the staff and taking student feedback,” Waller said. “There are students out there we offered to move out who declined when we did room changes.” But some students living in the three-person rooms this semester said having two roommates in the Pentagon has a negative effect on them.”I don’t think this environment is conducive to studying,” said Andy Davis, political science freshman. “We all leave to go to the library to study.”—-Contact Ben Bourgeois at [email protected]