The dorm building named after the co-founder of Mennonite Central Committee and former Goshen professor Orie O. Miller is slated to to open for use in the 2018-2019 school year.

After being closed for four years, the Miller dormitory will be opened, joining the Kratz and Yoder dormitories as the housing used primarily for first-year and sophomore students. The Miller dormitory will be opened due to the projected increase of students on campus next year.

Chad Coleman, Director of Campus Safety and Campus Housing Operations, said that this year the school’s KMY dorms were very near capacity. Some sophomores even had to live in Kulp Hall due to the dormitories not being able to house any more people.

With the dorms being close to completely full this year and next year’s first-year class looking to be larger than this year’s class, more housing was needed.

Currently there are six female floors and five male floors, and coming next year, Coleman is looking to have seven female floors and six male floors. It is likely that the top floors of both Miller and Kratz will be closed, which will leave three floors in both Kratz and Miller, and 13 different floors in all three dormitory buildings.

The exact distributions of the floors in each dorm building is not yet known, but Coleman hopes to have that decided sometime in the next two weeks.

The reason for the Miller dormitory closing three years ago was because there were not enough students to justify keeping it open. Before Miller closed, Yoder 1, Kratz 4 and Miller 4 were all closed due to a smaller student population.

Miller closed because it was better to close an entire building instead of just a few floors here and there. The cost of upkeep, from janitorial cleaning to heating the building, was much lower when closing a whole dorm building like Miller.

Andrew Pauls-Thomas ‘17, former resident of the Miller dorm, is excited to hear that it is opening.

“[It’s] great to hear that the Miller Hall is opening again. Many of us who lived there grew attached to the place, even though it was pretty much structurally identical to Kratz,” said Pauls-Thomas.

Like Pauls-Thomas said, both Kratz and Miller are almost exactly alike, so it may be hard for students to decide which dorm they want to live in next year. For those that are on the fence, Paul-Thomas has some advice.

“Students should live in Miller because…it is the closest residence hall to the Rott,” said Pauls-Thomas. “This prime location will give you a competitive edge over your first-year and sophomore peers during Rottsgiving or other popular food days.”