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A miscalculation of housing distribution needs, and not a lack of housing, is to blame for the six rising sophomores originally left without housing after their housing lottery last Thursday night, Co-director of Residence Life Jeremy Leiferman said.

According to Leiferman, every year the Department of Residence Life calculates the number of rooms to set aside for each class year based on the number of students who checked the box to participate in the housing lottery and on the number of students who checked the box but ended up living off campus the previous year.

This year, 98 percent of rising sophomores who checked the box participated, compared with the 96 percent of rising sophomores who checked the box and participated in room selection last year.

This discrepancy left the six students momentarily without rooms, despite the fact that students are guaranteed housing through their sophomore year; however the students have since been placed in formerly “held rooms.”

“Held rooms” are rooms that are set aside every year “just in case something happens, like a falling out between roommates that means they can’t live together anymore,” Leiferman said.

Leiferman also said that all rising and juniors who attended their room-selection appointments received housing through the lottery, saying “we have a very short waitlist this year, mostly of people who didn’t check the box, or people who didn’t come to their housing appointment.”

“The past few years, I think that everyone on campus, including Res Life, has been worried about a housing shortage,” Leiferman said. “But that was when Ridgewood was unavailable to students. A miscalculation of six beds does not indicate a housing shortage. We do not have a shortage of housing for next year.”

Leiferman did say that if the university follows through with its plan to gradually increase the Brandeis undergraduate population by 400 students, in the future, Residence Life may have trouble providing housing to juniors and seniors, for whom housing is not guaranteed.

“There is a potential that we will have fewer beds for seniors, but it’s hard to say right now,” he said. “If the university holds true to its projections, the change would be gradual, so who knows what could happen between now and then.”

Currently, the university has no plans to build or renovate any residence halls.

As for this year, Leiferman said he is glad that the percentage of students wanting to live on campus has gone up.

“It’s a good problem to have so many students want to live on campus,” he said. “If so many kids don’t want to leave at the end of the day, it means we’re doing something right.”