If you’ve been bad all year, you may receive a lump of coal in your stocking. A raw deal — until you look at the dozens of international students that will spend the holidays sleeping on the floor of a cramped Row House.

Every winter break, as many as 30 international students sleep on mattresses on the floors of the small lounge in Hammarskjold, unable to go home due to travel costs or visa complications. The University restricted winter break housing a decade ago, and then made matters worse in 2004 when it decided to close graduate student dorms and the Bechtel International Center over winter break, making Hammarskjold the only on-campus housing option for students.

The Office of Residence and Dining Enterprises cites limited security and energy costs as reasons for closing all other facilities. The office maintains that the mattresses and the single kitchen in Hammarskjold have adequately met students’ needs for winter break housing in the past.

International students, however, beg to differ. Hammarskjold, they say, is far too small for the number of housing requests it receives.

Hammarskjold, a co-op established in 1970 at the request of Bechtel International Center, houses 26 residents during the school year but the lounge and kitchen are the only areas kept open over the winter.

Though the multicultural-themed house is a popular residential option, former Hammarskjold financial manager Irungu Nyakera has experienced the house’s shortcoming firsthand. Nyakera spent his freshman and sophomore winters in Hammarskjold’s lounge, unable to pay for an expensive ticket back to his native Kenya.

“I slept on a mattress under the piano,” he said. “Other students slept in the computer cluster. There is no privacy when twenty six students are all together in one room. You can’t play music; there is no room for guests to come for the holidays.”

Filip Krsmanovic, a 2006 grad, echoed Nyakera’s discontent.

“Just leaving Hammarskjold open seems like another way the University stiffs international students,” he said. “A lot of international [students] can’t afford to go home, especially when they’re paying these huge fees out here, so there is an obvious need to stay.”

Nyakera argued that the University’s greatest concern should be international freshmen, who are least likely to have friends or connections off-campus or be able to find a sublet.

“It’s not just one person who’s affected,” he said. “Quite a few freshmen stay.”

However, Nyakera admitted that he does not know exactly how many international students are left without housing each winter. The University does not either.

Without the numbers to prove an outstanding need for better lodging over the break, international students say they have been ill-equipped to confront the University.

That may not be the case after this year. At the request of several international student leaders, ASSU President Elizabeth Heng, a senior, devised a survey to better gauge the plans of international freshmen for this winter.

Heng said the questionnaire is only the first step in what she hopes will be a reform process of the University’s current policy.

“I will be working very closely with housing, the Alumni Center, Bechtel International Center and the President’s office to move forward with this agenda,” she said.

From a preliminary tabulation of the responses, Heng estimated that one fourth of the international freshmen will have to stay in the United States over break. Heng said she hoped the data will prompt the University to move forward with a policy that accurately meets international students’ need for housing.

If Stanford does opt for a different policy, it could look to East Coast schools that make their campuses available to students over the holidays. At Princeton, Dean of Undergraduates Rachel Baldwin said all residence halls remain open, allowing international students “the luxury of staying in their own rooms.”

Tufts University closes most of its facilities, but offers several dorms to international students free of charge during the break. Harvard University, like Stanford, does not allow most international students to stay in the dorms, but has established several connections with non-profits off campus that house and feed international students for the winter.

But at least for this Christmas, Hammarskjold will fill to the brims with mattresses to shelter as many students as possible for the three weeks of break.

“Just one dorm, no dining hall and nothing else open,” Krsmanovic sighed. “That’s a bleak picture of winter break. And come on, winter break, that’s Christmastime, time for giving, not a time to be sleeping on the floor and eating tuna from Safeway.”