After more than an hour of debate, Department of Residence officials and Barton Hall residents were no closer to reaching a decision on where to live on campus next year as they were when the department announced the temporary closing of the building.

At an 8:30 p.m. Wednesday meeting in the Linden Hall Dinning Center, Director of the Department of Residence Randy Alexander discussed possible options for moving the two houses Barton contains. Neither of the options were seen as viable by a majority of the 40-plus Richardson Court residents who were in attendance.

The residents couldn’t agree on which would be the best option of keeping the houses together, while leaving enough room for them to add freshmen to their communities next year.

The Department of Residence announced at the last Inter-Residence Hall Association meeting it would temporarily close Barton Hall for the 2004-05 academic year because of projected low occupancy rates in the department, which Alexander said is a result of decreased enrollment at Iowa State.

“From our projections of occupancy rates, there aren’t enough students next year to fill all of our buildings on campus, and we decided to close Barton because it’s the smallest hall next to Fisher-Nickell, which has already closed,” he said.

Alexander said with the Barton Hall being so small, holding only 88 residents in a building with a capacity of 98, it would be easier to move the students on campus then it would be with a larger hall.

“We can fully accommodate all the residents of the halls in other buildings in RCA, as we temporarily close the building,” he said.

Closing the hall would save the department $270,000 in maintenance and other expenses associated with running a residence hall that wouldn’t be used to its full capacity. However, Alexander said the saved money wasn’t a factor in their decision to close the hall.

At the meeting, Alexander said the department plans to invest money back into the hall during the year it would be closed for needed maintenance, such as the need to add new sprinklers, furniture in the building, bathrooms, paint and a bigger commons area.

During the public meeting Wednesday, Alexander told residents not to disclose the department’s plan for renovation, because it still has to bring it before the Iowa Board of Regents for approval.

Alexander proposed to move Anders House, along with Harwood House from Lyon Hall to Buchanan Hall, so the honors program could be kept together, and so there would be enough room to accommodate new freshmen into the program. Tapan would then be moved to Lyon Hall.

Another proposal was to move Anders to Freeman Hall, where students from the recently closed Knapp Hall were put at the beginning of the year.

Alexander said he didn’t like this proposal, because Freeman isn’t even into a year of operation, and the displaced students need time to adjust and settle into their new resident community. He said doing so would cause a “significant disruption.”

Presidents Kendra Schmid and Chris Hansen of Anders House conducted a survey of their residents, which indicated 48 percent of members of the house wanted to move to Buchanan Hall; 69 percent favored moving to Freeman.

“We feel the suite-style community and bigger atmosphere of [Buchannan Hall] isn’t conducive to the small old RCA community that we like and are used to,” Hansen said.

He and Schmid also raised concerns about the house’s ability to accommodate new freshmen next year into their houses.

“We’d need enough room wherever we move to encourage freshmen to support the growth of the house,” Hansen said. “Freshmen are key to the survival of our house, especially if we are to have enough people to move back into Barton.