Conover update delayed amid enrollment dip

By Jake Tiger

Nestled in the northeast corner of campus, Rider’s Conover Hall was slated for a summer refurbishing, but the plan was tabled in late spring, causing about 60 students to be assigned different dorms a month before the fall semester began, according to university administrators.

Conover’s scheduled makeover was similar to Poyda Hall’s 2023 renovations, which included new air conditioning, paint, flooring and lighting. 

Vice President of Enrollment Management Drew Aromando, who oversees Residence Life, said the decision to delay the renovations came after Rider’s enrollment and housing numbers dipped, meaning the extra rooms Conover supplied were no longer a necessity.

“Where we had anticipated [an incoming] class close to 860, we landed with a class of 721,” Aromando said. “ We decided, if we don’t have the volume of students to fill the space [Conover], let’s redirect the money into other stuff we need to do right now.”

Conover, which sits parallel to Route 206, was closed to students last year to create more dense residential communities. With Conover closed again, Rider reached 98% capacity for on-campus students in fall 2024 despite the lower enrollment, Aromondo said.

The Conover renovations would have been worth between $500,000 to $1 million, according to Mike                                                                         

Reca, Rider’s vice president of university operations. This was about the cost of the 2023 Poyda update.

Ida DeMarco, a senior arts and entertainment industries management major, said she planned on living in Conover this fall – her final semester at Rider – but in early August, an email from Residence Life said she would be living in Olson Hall instead.

According to Aromondo, she and the 60 other students that were set to live in Conover were assigned rooms that were “comparable” to what Conover would have offered: singles with and without air conditioning.

DeMarco said, “I feel like there could have been a better way to go about replacing everybody. … It was definitely a really big inconvenience being told Conover was opening, only to be told a month before moving in that it wasn’t.”

DeMarco said Conover was initially appealing to her because it was supposed to be a refurbished, upperclassman dorm with a reduced cost for single-person rooms similar to Poyda, where she lived for the prior academic year.

In Olson, she said her floor was almost all freshmen and they could be rowdy at times, unlike the jaded upperclassmen she had grown used to in Poyda.

“It’s not a huge deal, but as a senior, it kind of sucks being housed with a bunch of freshmen,” DeMarco said. “Everybody on my floor is very nice … but it can get pretty loud.”

Fortunately for DeMarco, her university bill showed that Rider did honor the $6,240 Conover rate, as DeMarco’s double-as-a-single room in Olson would normally cost $6,850, according to university housing prices.

Aromondo said reopening Conover is important to him, and there are already discussions about Rider’s enrollment prospects and the future of the hall.

“I absolutely want to make [Conover] happen,” Aromondo said. “We’ll spend the year going through what we want to do to renovate it and plan for it to be open.”