The closure of Landers was occupancy-driven, according to Associate Provost David McDonald. Last year, Gentle hall was shut down for the same reasons.

“We peaked and kind of stayed right there,” McDonald explained Western’s admissions trajectory. For the last four consecutive years, he added, Western’s enrollment has been relatively stable. “Last year was a one-student difference; you can’t get much more stable than that,” McDonald said.

Western lost 30 students from 2011 to 2012, but added one between 2012 and 2013 according to the Oregon University System (OUS) Institutional Research Services. This is a fairly stable trend, said McDonald; he calls this a plateau Western has reached.

Western’s retention rate for freshmen is 75.1 percent, compared with the OUS average of 82.1 percent, and Western’s graduation rate is at 51.2 percent, while the OUS has a 60.5 percent rate.

The goal, according to McDonald and Tina Fuchs, dean of students, is to have full residence halls on campus. When there are fewer people, shutting down one hall means that the others have higher occupany.

“It’s better for our students this way,” McDonald said. With Landers closed, buildings are fuller and students live in larger community groups.

“Students living on campus are highly successful academically,” said David Sundby, the interim associate director of housing. “That’s why we have that first-year living requirement.” Part of the goal, according to him, is to get freshmen connected to campus. “The best we can do is make the experience as positive as possible,” Sundby said.
With Landers closed, the Housing Office and Physical Plant have a chance to inspect that facility, said Fuchs; this is also a chance to evaluate the entire residential system.

“We want to take a step back, evaluate out facilities and see what it means for the future of housing,” said Fuchs. “What it comes down to is, ‘What are we going to do?’”
Landers was constructed in 1970, making the building 44-years-old this year. According to Fuchs, the rule of thumb is that a building has between 30 and 50 years of good use, so Landers is due for an overhaul. Nevertheless, it remains structurally sound.

“That’s a long time for a facility to be operating without major improvements,” said Fuchs.
A committee will be formed soon to decide what to do with Landers. They will be looking also at Barnum, Butler and Gentle Halls. Fuchs will be on the committee, as well as representatives from the Physical Plant as well as student representatives.

“Trying to build housing without student input, that would be ridiculous,” said Fuchs. “The goal is to get feedback going on.” She hopes to update one floor of Landers and then get input on the improvements before continuing.
According to Fuchs, the group will be guided in part by Western’s master plan, which gives some goals and objectives for housing, but won’t be tightly restricted.

“It’s a good roadmap for us to at least use as a guide, but I also recognize that we have limitations in terms of what we can do,” said Fuchs. Some of those are fiscal limitations, but there are also challenges in dealing with older buildings as well.
For example, Landers was constructed with cinderblocks, which makes full renovations challenging, since those walls are difficult to work with.

“This is not a decision that I would take lightly,” said Fuchs.
According to Fuchs, students tend to gravitate towards the newer residence halls on campus, Heritage and Ackerman, so it makes sense to shift everyone into those locations.

“We went through last year with a lot of empty beds in all our buildings,” said Fuchs.
Plans for the following year are made from projections that are based on numbers of applications for housing received each week. Over time, said Sundby, those estimates become clearer, yielding more accurate predictions for the future.

“More students leave over the course of the year than come in,” said Sundby. This attrition means that, even by the end of the year, fewer people live in on-campus housing; according to Sundby, that makes it important to start with fuller rather than emptier buildings.

The closure of Landers is projected to save Western about $200,000 dollars over the course of this year.

“It helps offset any other expenses,” Fuchs said. “We don’t have as much revenue because we don’t have as many people living on campus.”