Forty-four junior residents of Creekside Village were greeted with letters from the university before winter break, informing them that due to UB's commitment to maintaining the complex's graduate-students-only policy, they will have to move into another on-campus apartment complex once their contracts expire.
Carolyn Danner, a junior business major with a concentration in marketing, is one of those students. Danner said she is upset that the administration invited her to live in Creekside Village and later changed its mind.
"They came to us and offered us an apartment in Creekside," Danner said. "Now they are kicking us out."
"Why don't they wait for us to graduate and let no more undergraduates into Creekside in the meantime and let that be the end?" said Danner's roommate, Cassie Durawa, a junior psychology major. "We now have to apply for another apartment, and they will look at us as being first, but (there's) no guarantee."
When UB announced plans last year to construct Creekside Village, the apartments were billed as housing for graduate and married students. However, the long waiting list for undergraduate apartments prompted the Office of University Residence Halls and Apartments to offer undergraduate students the option of living in Creekside.
According to Elizabeth Lidano, associate director of the University Apartments, her office receives apartment applications from undergraduate students before applications from graduate students, because prospective graduate students must wait to see if they are accepted to UB before they can apply for an apartment.
Because of this time disparity, Lidano said it is difficult to know if there are going to be any openings in graduate apartments for undergraduates on the waiting list.
"(The administration) said they would do their best, but who knows what that means," said Christopher Hickey, a junior engineering major residing in Creekside.
To help stabilize the university's apartment situation, Lidano said that South Lake Village, Flint Village and Hadley Village - with the exception of the studio apartments - will be available exclusively to undergraduate students.
According to Joseph Krakowiak, director of University Residence Halls, the students who have to move out of Creekside Village will be given top priority for the undergraduate apartments.
"Everything we can do will be done," Krakowiak said. "I understand people are concerned, and we will do our best to accommodate these people first."
Krakowiak said undergraduate students offered apartments in Creekside would probably have been able to move into one of the undergraduate apartments if they had waited a little longer for more spots to open up, but he said he wanted to give some undergraduates the opportunity to finalize their living arrangements early on.
"We should have waited, possibly," Krakowiak said.
Creekside Village resident Chris Lubniewski, a junior history major, said knowing of this possibility would have affected his decision to apply for on-campus housing.
"If I had known that this would have happened, I probably would have not agreed to live here," Lubniewski said. "I was all pumped up about the two year thing. I would rather have lived off campus in one place for two years than to move apartments halfway through."
"We are getting cheated, and there is a chance that we will not be able to get an on-campus apartment at all."
Photo: Courtesy of SUNY
