After requiring all first-year students to live in on-campus housing this year, University Housing received a higher number of first-year housing applications than expected. In response, University Housing has rented two floors of University Towers to make space for an estimated 300 applicants above their original housing allotment. 

University Housing approximates the number of first-years on campus, including those at University Towers, is between 4,700 and 4,800, according to Barry Olson, associate vice chancellor of the Division of Academic and Student Affairs (DASA). Olson is responsible for the oversight of University Housing as a business administrator. As it was introduced last November, the living requirement enforces that all first-year students live in University Housing residence halls, with several exceptions.

Students older than 21 or younger than 16 years of age, married with a marriage license, with dependent children, that have military or veteran status or students having completed two semesters of coursework as a college student would receive automatic exemption from the requirement, if requested. In addition, students with “a demonstrated financial hardship, medical and disability circumstances, religious or other conclusively demonstrated special circumstances” could appeal for an exemption via review by a committee in University Housing.

Vice Chancellor and Dean of DASA Mike Mullen quoted in November the benefits of first-years living on campus.

“The on-campus living experience at NC State promotes greater community and creates a sense of citizenship within the Wolfpack family,” Mullen said. “Living on campus also provides greater proximity to university life, including access to student organizations and recreation opportunities, greater access to academic resources, wellness resources, and participation in learning communities.” 

A late influx of housing applications 

As University Housing does not receive any funding from the state of North Carolina, it’s standard policy to board as many students as is possible, according to University Housing Director Susan Grant. In past years, University Housing received approximately 80 percent of first-years as on-campus residents. Based on university enrollment and advice from the Office of Enrollment Management, University Housing expected 4,450 first-years to live on campus.

“We had a slight decline in enrollment in previous years, so one of the messages from the University was ‘let’s work on capitalizing on as many of these freshmen as we can,’” Olson said. “We ‘cast out’ [accepted] a handful more applications than we had in the past, and we got a better yield.” 

For the 2017-2018 year, housing assignments were released on May 21. However, because the associate director of housing operations, responsible for coordinating assignments, resigned prior to the assignment date, Olson said that there was ‘no flow of information’ within University Housing as an estimated 300 additional first-years applied for housing on campus.

In July, Technician met with Grant to discuss the availability of on-campus housing. Prior to the meeting, University Housing had attempted several solutions via email to resolve the excess amount of applications, beginning with placing unassigned students on a waiting list in early June.

On June 16 and 19, University Housing sent emails to upperclassmen offering an option to cancel their housing applications before June 22 without any fiscal penalty, which some students accepted, according to Grant. As a final option, on June 23, University Housing offered unassigned first-years the option to live in University Towers where it had rented two floors.

“We kept assigning, assigning, assigning, but the unassigned kept growing because they put in more applications,” Grant said. “We started getting more and more applications beginning the third week of May, and May 1 was the deadline for when students had to tell the University when they were coming.”

Grant stated that she did not know how many students accepted their housing agreement before the May 1 university acceptance deadline. According to Grant, University Housing offered rolling acceptance until late May to accommodate transfer students as well as students accepted to multiple universities.

“If we’re not full, we’re going to want those applications, and at the time, we knew that we didn’t have quite enough people,” Grant said. “Space deals with how many people we allow to come back to campus; it is a number game.”

Housing deal with University Towers

Looking to place as many first-year students on campus as possible, University Housing rented two floors in University Towers, approximately 256 beds. Even though University Towers is a private residence hall, University Housing-based residence advisors work on the floors and follow NC State housing policies. Students living on the floors rented by University Housing pay the same housing rates as they would on campus, but must also pay for a University Towers meal plan and Wolf TV cable, as negotiated by University Housing.

“For the most part, the feedback has been generally positive,” Olson said. “My hope is that students over there have a seamless experience. … I think overall that it was a necessary situation, and it ended up working pretty well for our students. They’re generally paying about the same amount of money.”

Maayan Eaves, a first-year studying communication and film studies, was informed by University Housing via email that she could not live in on-campus housing and elected to live in University Towers to fulfill the live-on requirement. Because she was debating between attending two colleges, she fell into the pool of first-years who applied for housing after the May 1 university acceptance deadline.

“I was intending to go to the University of Georgia,” Eaves said. “I made friends and everything but I switched to State long after the cutoff date of May 1, so as soon as I filled out a housing application, they said there was nowhere on campus housing available for me. … I thought they’d have to make room, but they were extremely blunt and told me that I was the exception to the rule. … I was debating whether or not I’d made the right choice leaving UGA and coming here. … The school … was very vague as to what the problem was.”

Olson also elaborated on how knowledge of enrolled students affected the process. 

“When the university enrolls … in a way, we cast a wide net,” Olson said. “We didn’t just offer 4,700 or 4,800 students; you actually offer more than that and get a certain yield. We certainly could have handled it better. Had we had our numbers a bit earlier, then we could’ve been a bit more proactive; we were definitely off by a couple of weeks. … We know that initially we held 4,450 beds for freshmen.”

The “wide net” of acceptances offered by NC State was driven by advice from Enrollment Management and Services, according to Olson. Plans to mitigate a similar housing deal are underway in University Housing.

“Our goal moving forward is to never have to deal with an issue like this again,” Olson said. “What we have also done is to enhance our communication with admissions, with all of Enrollment Management to make sure that we are getting more consistent, regular data from them.”

The live-on-campus requirement in review

Olson approximates that NC State residence halls hold 6,350 beds with a total of 10,000 beds in University Housing. Given that University Housing would have had enough space to accommodate the class of 2021, a future excess of housing applications should be mitigatable, according to Olson.

Because of the large influx of housing applications in May, other first-year students who had applied for housing well before the May assignment date could not obtain on-campus housing.

Izze Wickman, a first-year studying engineering, had applied to live in Bowen or Carroll Residence Hall before May and originally intended to live on campus, regardless of the housing requirement.

“I think the University could have handled the situation better considering they knew how many freshmen were enrolling and how many dorms they had available,” Wickman said. “The process of actually getting an apartment was pretty rough since I was told I needed to lease on my own, and then told I had a room at UT … once it was settled the transition was very smooth.”

Spring students on deferred enrollment or those transferring into NC State will not be required to live on campus; rather, they will be “strongly encouraged” to live on campus. Three hundred and fifty beds are currently set aside for about 450 students, according to Olson. 

“There’s no shortage of ‘sorrys’ to go around,” Olson said. “We take ownership. My hope is that [students living in University Towers] find connections and do engage in our living on campus experiences. It’s unfortunate … we really do try to accommodate as many of our students as we can.”

University Housing plans to hold more beds, communicate the number of available beds for returning students in the spring semester and continue to seek strategies to ensure that all future first-year students can live on campus. Information will be distributed by mass email, web communication and other methods, according to Olson. Olson says that the list of exceptions to the living requirement is still under review for the coming year to better accommodate students, and that Housing should be able to fully accommodate the 4,600 first-year students projected to live on campus next year.