In the face of skyrocketing rent prices, housing shortages, and ever-rising tuition costs, Boston College has reintroduced a new challenge for its first-year students: the infamous lofted triple.
The University calls these rooms “lofted triples” instead of “forced triples,” the term more commonly used among students. This type of accommodation is a cramped and less-than-ideal housing option to spend your first year of college. While a double room usually falls short of the minimum space requirements for three people in a residential unit in Newton, BC has been granted a special allowance to permit these rooms to exist on campus.
While lofted triples were phased out for several years due to COVID restrictions, they are not a new invention. An article published as part of The Gavel’s Declassified BC Survival Guide in 2014 gives some advice on how to deal with them and goes to show how long they have been part of the BC freshman experience.
Lofted triples only exist on the Upper Campus. There has long been a divide between BC’s Newton and Upper Campuses—the two housing communities that host the freshman class. The University has widened this gap by giving students the choice of either guaranteeing themselves a spot on Upper Campus in a lofted triple or rolling the dice and risking getting placed on Newton Campus.
The option of guaranteeing themselves placement on Upper in a lofted room or taking the chance of being placed on either Newton in a regular room, Upper in a regular room, or ending up on Upper in a lofted triple anyway ways heavy on many students. It often leads them to draw comparisons between living in a lofted triple and being on Newton. While Newton Campus dwellers will always have to commute, it does not have to continue to be considered the inferior option around campus. Newton Campus has a lot of opportunities to renovate itself to make it superior in ways to Upper and the reliability of the campus shuttles could be improved.
Ashi Jindal, MCAS, ‘28, a freshman living in a lofted triple spoke about her experience living in one located in Cheverus Hall: “It’s different from what I expected; it’s definitely really cramped but I have courteous roommates so it’s not that bad. But it’s definitely really tight, and storage is tight.” She also commented on whether she would rather have her current housing situation or live on Newton: “After living on Upper for a month, I feel like it’s a better community for me; most of my friends live here, it’s close to class, so I think I’d rather live in a lofted triple than on Newton.”
Although the vast majority of students currently housed in lofted triples did not opt to be there, incoming freshmen were given the option of volunteering to live in a lofted triple to guarantee a spot on Upper Campus and save a little on room and board. Dionisi Diamantis, MCAS, ‘26, an RA in Gonzaga, shared how the limited space caused issues on move-in day:
“On move-in day, a lot of the issues came from the lofted triples, and the main issue was the space. One big thing that we did to help was to rearrange the furniture in the room to make the most out of the space, but they were still very unhappy with the situation and were already asking how to get out of the lofted triples, what they could do. They were trying to get furniture out of the room, and we had to get the RDs and other supervisors to explain to them furniture can’t leave the room.”
“Now, though, a month into school, there’s a lot less issues with it as students have learned to adjust to the situation. However, it’s still an unfair situation, I would say, with the amount of space given for three people to live in a double. Especially with the one ladder for two high beds– I don’t understand that one.”
While Upper Campus used to house a mix of sophomores and freshmen, it is now a freshman-only community due to the increasing size of incoming classes. In recent years BC has turned dorms that traditionally housed sophomores, including Williams and Welch, into housing for the remaining freshmen.
Most freshmen who are living in lofted triples were placed there randomly. This kind of dice roll is a common frustration at BC. Incoming freshmen are unsure of whether they’ll be placed on Newton or Upper, and in a regular or lofted room. They also don’t know whether they’ll receive 3 or 4 years of guaranteed housing. This only adds to the anxiety of incoming freshmen who now have to anticipate yet another obstacle and uncertainty. While BC prides itself on being a safe space to live and learn, this uncertainty detracts from that.
According to the Office of Student Affairs, “The majority of Boston College students receive three years of guaranteed housing. Sophomore transfer students receive one year of guaranteed housing, while nursing students, Presidential Scholars, and certain student-athletes receive four years of guaranteed housing.”
Students with three years of housing are required to live off-campus during their junior year. However, as rents in the surrounding area have continued to increase in recent years, many students have appealed for a fourth year of housing. While many appeals are granted, this only applies further pressure to the strained housing situation. With the increased number of juniors staying on campus, upperclassmen dorms fill up faster and students with later pick times are pushed to residence halls that would otherwise accommodate underclassmen.
While other universities in the Boston area have faced housing shortages, they have taken concrete steps to make additional housing available to students. Suffolk University has approved plans for the conversion of 101 Tremont Street into student housing, and Northeastern and Tufts both have plans to construct new student residence halls near their respective campuses.
Additionally, several universities have leased out hotels to accommodate their growing demand for housing, a practice that started during the pandemic. These institutions include Northeastern University, which recently converted the South Tower of the Sheraton to permanently house students, and Boston University, which currently houses around 125 students in the Hyatt Regency in Cambridge. These measures are unsustainable and impermanent solutions but are more democratic than forcing first-year students into small spaces not built to accommodate them.
Across Greater Boston, students are increasingly opting to stay in university housing when they may have previously chosen to rent an apartment. This not only saves money but also incorporates students into a campus community. However, many students are placed in such hotels and find themselves isolated from the rest of their respective universities’ communities.
This raises many questions aimed towards the BC administration: Are there plans to build new dorms on campus? Could members of the class of 2028 continue to be forced to live in lofted triples in upperclassman dorms as they progress through their academic careers? How does this affect RAs who are now responsible for more students?
While BC’s Institutional Master Plan (IMP), originally developed in 2004, designates five buildings to be constructed or renovated as residential halls, it has not increased its capacity to accommodate students since the renovation of 2000 Commonwealth Avenue and the construction of Thomas More Apartments in 2016. BC has also not increased the capacity to house freshmen at all. To accommodate the entire student body, further measures have to be taken.
While Upper and Newton have traditionally been the campuses to house freshmen, to truly remove this divide and solve the housing crisis, one solution could be to house all freshmen on Newton. If additional high-density housing units are constructed on Newton Campus, the entire freshman class could live there, thus removing this divide and the issue of lofted triples. This would free up Upper Campus and College Road to become a sophomore-only community, and Lower Campus dorms could properly accommodate the junior and senior classes.
This solution would represent a huge change in the freshman living situation and require a significant amount of time and money to implement. Furthermore, the current dining facilities and shuttle capacities would need to be scaled up to compensate for the higher number of students living on Newton. While making such a large change over the course of just a year or two, the transition could be made smoother by gradually increasing the capacity of Newton’s housing accommodations and facilities until it reaches the point where it can sustain the entire freshman population.
Naturally, such a change is unlikely to happen in the near future. Furthermore, many alumni feel a sense of nostalgia towards living on Upper Campus as a freshman and might not support the decision to move freshmen off of it.
Additionally, the Mods present a unique challenge due to the amount of space they take up relative to their housing capacity. While the Mods were never meant to be permanent, and the IMP cites replacing the Mods with higher-density housing units as one of its developmental goals, they still stand on Lower Campus. Although they are undeniably a staple of BC culture, they also push many students into housing insecurity. As a result, many see them as an unnecessary luxury for the few who get the chance to live in them.
Forced triples are a prime example of the effects of the housing crisis at BC and in Greater Boston as a whole. First-years are required to live on campus, and many upperclassmen choose to do so out of necessity. BC has a responsibility to improve housing for not only freshmen but all classes. Students make do with the assignments they receive, but forced triples are an impermanent solution to a persistent problem.
The Office of Residential Life did not respond to our request for comment.
