Sophomores Tessa Rockafellow and Heather Bauer’s dorm room is pretty typical. It’s fairly cramped. Photos of friends and family are plastered onto bulletin boards. A computer hums off to the side of the room, drowned out by the television.

Their hallway is lined with posters and pamphlets about CUBE fest, student programs on campus and emergency numbers.

But Rockafellow and Bauer also have access to a pool, continental breakfast and live in downtown Eau Claire.

The two roommates live with about 100 other students in the downtown Holiday Inn, 205 S. Barstow St., this semester because of an overflow of students living in the on-campus residence halls.

All students are on the third, fourth and fifth floors; three RAs work hard to make it as close to regular dorm life as possible, third floor RA Amanda Stoffregen said.

This was somewhat of a surprise for Rockafellow.

“I just thought it’d be like living in a hotel,” she said.

But just like every dorm, events like wing activities will take residents on group trips, Stoffregen said.

About half of the students at the Holiday Inn are upper classmen and the other half is made up of transfer students, Housing Director Charles Major said.

Long standing policy at UW-Eau Claire guarantees student housing to all who ask for it, Major said.

Putting students up at the Holiday Inn costs the university about $28 a day. Usually all are moved out of the hotel and into on-campus dorms by the start of second semester.

As it turns out, the university doesn’t lose money on the deal even though it is an added expense, Major said.

He explained that during second semester, all the hotel students fill in to the on-campus dorms when the original residents move out for various reasons. That way, instead of having empty rooms, all dorms generally are full.

Despite all hotel students living in one location and regardless of the attempts to make the hotel as much of a dorm as possible, the obvious drawbacks are prevalent.

For example, it’s about a 20-25 minute walk to campus and the main line of transportation is the city bus that makes its normal route from downtown through campus.

“That’s kind of the pits to think that we’ve got to go (to campus)” said Bauer, a transfer student from UW-River Falls.

Still, efforts to make it the same as on-campus dorms can be seen once you walk on the floor.

“We’re trying to make it more like a normal residence hall life,” Stoffregen said. “I think they’re pretty surprised it’s not a regular hotel.”