The Department of Residential Life implemented an advanced rent policy for this year’s campus housing contract renewal to prevent housing cancellations and to give students who are serious about living on campus more housing options.Students renewing their contracts were charged a non-refundable $250 advanced rent for both on-campus apartments and residence halls. Students who then choose to cancel their housing assignments on campus will forfeit the $250 they paid.Renee Richard Snider, ResLife associate director of operations, said the number of renewals was down slightly this year but was not as low as anticipated. About 1,500 students renewed their housing contracts this year.”There’s always a year-to-year difference,” Snider said. “The advanced rent didn’t have as much of an effect.”The advanced rent did, however, affect the amount of spaces available in East Campus Apartments and West Campus Apartments, the most popular on-campus housing options for upperclassmen. About 60 more apartment spaces were available March 18 — the last day of apartment renewals — this year than last year.”Current apartment residents would typically use their ‘squatter rights,’ where they would use their renewal priority to reserve a spot on-campus while looking at their off-campus options and be able to cancel their on-campus housing arrangement with no financial penalty,” Snider said. “They can’t do that with this policy.”Steve Waller, ResLife director, said both ECA and WCA filled up quickly this year.”Within the first two hours on the last day of renewals, the apartments were full,” Waller said. “Not everyone who tried to renew their contract got in.”Traditional residence halls saw a decrease in renewals this year, but Snider said residence halls never fill during renewals.”There are still spaces available in the Horseshoe — Louise Garig being the exception because it’s smaller,” Snider said.Nearly 900 beds are available in the on-campus apartments for upperclassmen and about 20 percent of housing assignments — roughly 200 beds — are normally canceled by June 1. Waller said ResLife looked around the Southeastern Conference and the rest of the country to see what other universities did to curb housing cancellations and noticed many of the universities assessed advanced rent.”We were one of the few schools that did not have advanced rent,” Waller said.How the advanced rent affects the number of cancellations won’t be known until late summer.”We’re really curious to know if the advanced rent will have an impact on cancellations,” Snider said.Waller said he’s pleased the implementation of the advanced rent policy went smoothly.”With about 4,000 students eligible for renewal, we only received about six e-mails concerning the advanced rent, and the e-mails were more along the lines of questions about policy,” Waller said.Amy Goff, English freshman, said she didn’t mind paying the advanced rent when she renewed her contract and thought the advanced rent wouldn’t influence a student’s decision very much when it comes to housing options.”If someone wants to live off campus, they’ll go off campus,” Goff said. “If they want to stay, they’ll pay it.”—-Contact Brianna Paciorka at [email protected]