Southeast Missouri State University opened a new residence hall in August of 2013, which until last Friday had not received an official name. Recently, Donald G. and Gloria King LaFerla made a $1.7 million dollar donation to Southeast Missouri State University, ensuring that the building will now be named the Donald G. and Gloria King LaFerla Residence Hall. This is just one of the changes that will be made to residence hall life next year.

An average room and board rate increase of 1.65 percent was approved at the Board of Regents meeting in February. This increase is lower than what students paid last year, which was an increase of 2.97 percent. In addition to the housing increase the "board" portion of the rate, which includes the student meal plans, will increase 4 percent.

According to the motion form used by the Board of Regents, the average increase in board rates is 4 percent, in addition to last year's 3.49 percent.

It was also announced in January that Dearmont Hall will no longer be single occupancy, and the rate for the River Campus housing has been set at $6,250. This rate was set on the same level as LaFerla Hall and Merick Hall.

"In terms of buildings that are increasing in cost there's really only two," Dr. Bruce Skinner, assistant vice president for student success and director of Residence Life, said. "That would be the new residence hall, the one over by the Polytech building and Merick Hall. Those are our two newest buildings that are currently open. The demand for those is exceedingly high, the amenities that they have in them, in my opinion, set them apart from some of our other suite-style housing.

"So based upon the demand and amenities level we increased those two buildings by $250 for the academic year. The third building is the River Campus building, so we set that room rate as the same $6,250 as what you see now for Merick and the new residence hall [LaFerla]. Those are the three buildings, but really it is only two, that have seen an increase in terms of their cost of what a student would be paying to live there this year compared to next year."

Students who live in Dearmont's newly private rooms will pay $600 less than what they paid for a private this year. This year the cost for living alone in Dearmont was $5,850. Next year the price has been listed at $5,250. Although Dearmont is the only residence hall with specifically private housing, students can also request a private room in any of the halls on campus. The fee is an extra 50 percent of the annual cost of that room when paying for a normal double.

Skinner said even though buildings such as Merick and LaFerla are in high demand, students can still enter in a lottery to be placed in a private room.

"We've had the lottery for a number of years, traditionally it's a lottery, but we've always had enough spaces to accommodate what everyone wants. So even though it's a lottery, everyone wins is one way to look at it," Skinner said. "But you do have to tell us ahead of time, 'Yes, I am interested in a private room,' and we do that intentionally because we want to be able to plan."

Skinner said that the residence life staff plans for 100 private rooms across the residence hall system.

"We haven't really had to tell students that they're not going to get one of their top choices because there hasn't been significant demand, meaning 200-plus people," Skinner said.

The other main change within the budget proposal was the change to Southeast's meal plans. Skinner explained that the increase is broken down into different factors.

"With the board rate [meal plan], the student meal plan rate went up 4 percent. And that breaks down really into three things that drive that cost," Skinner said. "The first one was 2.1 percent was the [Consumer Price Index] for food away from home, which is what we look at in terms of what projected food cost should be in terms of labor. So that's 2.1 percent of that 4 percent. The second variable [was that] we agreed a number of years ago in our contract with Chartwells that they provided us resources including funds to renovate. ... As part of that we agreed that each year they would get a 1 percent rate increase on top of whatever CPI is. So that puts us at 3.1 percent.

"The other .09 percent is really because we are bringing another venue online at the River Campus. ... We know that some students who used to be eating at the UC will now be eating over there. So being partners with Chartwells we did want to provide some revenues since we were bringing another dining option online and spreading our students out over more venues and not just adding more students."

This year's rate for lunch and dinner with a meal plan is currently set at $6.50. Skinner said this will also go up with whatever the percentage increase is that food service goes up.

"So since meal plans went up four percent value exchange has to go up 4 percent," Skinner said. "So I believe it is an additional 25 cents for dinner and 25 cents for lunch."