They made the best of a bad situation, they said, but now it’s time to go.

One is Brandon Havel, freshman in liberal arts and sciences-open-option. The other is Sean O’Donnell, freshman in psychology. Both are about to leave temporary housing in Helser Hall. They and the others on their floor are close, they said. In the first half of the semester, they have bonded together in the way only those in strange situations can. On the Sadler floor, everyone knows each other’s names, and the doors are mostly left open.

“I think you get a good estimate of that by hanging out on the floor for five minutes,” said the group’s community adviser, Matthew Shwery, sophomore in pre-journalism and mass communication. “They’re pretty close. They eat together, play together, study together, do pretty much everything together.”

But not for long.

The men who remain in Helser have finally, after half a semester of waiting, received their marching orders. Soon, they will be scattered to the four winds around campus. O’Donnell, who requested to be reassigned to another Friley Hall room, knows of one person on the floor who will move with him to Willow Hall, but the two will be separated by five floors.

“And there’s nothing we can do about it, either,” he said.

Most of the men remaining in Helser, Havel and O’Donnell said, want to stay there. They’re happy there. They’re close to their classes, close to the Union Drive Community Center, and among friends.

This friendship, Shwery said, may have been helped along by the group’s situation. Stuck in temporary housing, their future living arrangements uncertain, the men of Sadler Hall came together and unified.

“It definitely had a big impact,” Shwery said of the plight the freshmen faced. “There are floors all across campus that are as united as our floor, but it’s a little like going to war. It brings together men who have experienced it. They have a story to tell that no one else on campus can tell about temporary housing. It’s rare to find.”

O’Donnell said the aspect of suddenly having to leave the floor at any time, usually with the prescribed 48-hours notice, weighed on him.

“It was a deal of separation anxiety, knowing that eventually, you’re going to have to leave what you’re used to,” he said.

As of Tuesday, there were 118 students left living in temporary housing, most staying in rooms in Barton and Helser Halls, said Virginia Arthur, associate director of the department of residence. Ironically, these two buildings were closed last year due to budget constraints, Arthur said. The Department of Residence will save $776,000 from the closing of the two halls.

Iowa State is not unique in facing occupancy overflows necessitating temporary housing, Arthur said. Nor is this the first year this has occurred. In fact, numbers of students requiring temporary housing dropped sharply about five years ago, she said, and now the usual number of displaced students is around 300, a number which usually shrinks rapidly.

The reason for this year’s numbers — about 200 living in temporary housing at the beginning of the semester — was a combination of factors, Arthur said. Most notably, the closing of Helser and Barton combined with the increased retention of students using the residence hall system.

But there is no way, she said, for students like Havel and O’Donnell to remain in Helser. The cost of keeping the building open would simply be too great, and there is not enough demand to justify it, an aspect O’Donnell laments.

“I guess it’s kind of like we’re just being treated as numbers,” he said.

“I admit there’s a lot of students on this campus, but you can’t just ignore 60 or 70 students.”

After a Wednesday night meeting, the remaining men in the building were reassigned, most to Buchanan Hall, where the finishing touches are being put on renovations. Students are expected to move in to their new rooms by the end of October.

The doors of Helser Hall will be locked, presumably for the last time to students, by 5 p.m. on Nov. 5.