A recent e-mail from Residential Life about $500 for a dorm room has caused some confusion amongst students about the expense of living on campus.

Normally, for incoming freshmen there is a $200 pre-payment and $100 that are applied as a credit to housing. For returning students, it’s a $100 pre-payment and $200 that are applied as a credit to housing.

But in an e-mail sent out to the student body on behalf of Residential Life on Jan. 23, there was mention of an additional $200 required by May 1. The e-mail said that due to “the demand for housing in recent years this will help secure your room in housing.”

According to Tresea Buckhaults, director of residential life, the administration has a problem with students who will pay for a room then decide not to attend. This leads to empty rooms and attending students not able to get a room.

The additional $200 required by May 1 is a way to get students committed to ULM when reserving a room. The $200 is not an increase in housing, but a payment that is applied as a credit towards your housing.

Along with the change in paying for rooms, the GPA requirement to enter Commons I and Commons II has increased from a 2.0 to 2.3. Apartment buildings six and seven require a 2.5 GPA. Students must maintain at least a 2.0 cumulative GPA to continue living on campus, according to Residential Life.

Buckhaults and her colleagues  decided to implement this after taking into account the average GPA of the dorms. They believe this will foster an environment with students who are dedicated to learning and weed out uncommitted students.

“We want students that are committed to being here. We want them to be able to have the housing that they want. In order to do that, we have to find a way to identify the students that are not committed to being here so that we can take care of that problem,” Buckhaults said.

Lexes Boyde, a sophomore elementary education major, was initially scared by the e-mail.

“It told me that I would have to get $500 up front to reserve my room and I didn’t know if I would have it,” Boyde said.

But Boyde was ecstatic when told that the $500 is not an increase, but divided in a way that the $500 is simply paid in three parts with the $400 being applied as a credit to your housing bill. Not needing to pay more for housing was a huge relief.

Boyde agrees with the reasoning. Her sister tried to attend last fall, but there were not rooms available for her. She was told she would have to move into an apartment off campus.