A Home Away From Home?

Southern University has now welcomed back students on campus for the 2022-2023 school year. Unfortunately, for many students they were unable to secure on campus housing. This school year it has been said that Southern accepted around 1,900 incoming freshmen despite the fact there is only enough housing to allow 2000 students to live on campus.
On July 10th, a near seven hundred of returning students were sent an email that their housing application had been received but that housing for the Fall 2022 term had reached full capacity. The email stated that Southern University is “not able to guarantee an assignment for said student on or before August 15th.” This created a lot of social uproar for students. Many students felt that they were thrown into a very stressful situation because they now only had a month to find living arrangements. For out of state students this was especially difficult because many of them are not able to come back to Baton Rouge before the Fall semester to look for adequate/affordable off campus housing.
“I felt really bad for students who didn’t get housing, especially since not everyone can afford to live off campus or has access to things you need to be a commuter like reliable transportation”, said Taylor St. Vilus, a junior urban forestry major.
After the email was sent out, students scrambled to quickly find nearby apartments or wait for an answer from the Housing department to state they had received an on-campus housing assignment. Sadly, for many students this process did not go smoothly.
“I had applied for housing as a returning student and I was told I was on a waitlist, and they would call and let me know if anything would change. I would every now and then call to check if they had any spots available because I was never getting any calls or emails from them about housing.” said Alissa Lambrecht, a junior mass communication major. She continues, “ One day I just so happened to call, and they said they had a room available and that I would have to come get it asap. When I got to housing, I was told to wait in the back and they said they needed to check rooms because they knew some students hadn’t moved in.”
Now, it has been expressed from various on-campus students that regardless of the electronic statement sent to students about the lack of housing, there are dorms that still have vacant rooms available such as Bradford Hall and Boley Hall. This issue of low availability of housing affects Southern students in more than one way. Since there were such a large amount of enrollment this term, dorms that were previously left empty to be COVID-19 quarantine rooms are now being used for normal student housing. This indicates that if there is a large outbreak of COVID-19 there is no place for students to quarantine besides their respective dorm rooms. This can create a major issue for faculty and students on campus.
Another sad reality from this housing crisis is the number of incoming freshmen who must go elsewhere to get their education because they also were on the housing waitlist. The Department of Residential Life and Housing was contacted and did not release an official statement about any attempts to rectify this issue in the future. Hopefully this ordeal was a learning block for Southern University, and this will be prevented for future classes.