by Aaron Butts
Last week, Capital was abuzz with activity, and classes hadn’t even started yet. Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, The Huffington Post, and even local news stations were all talking about the fact that the university, due to overcrowding in the residence halls, has decided to house thirty sophomore men in The Fort Rapids Indoor Water Park Resort.
It’s no secret to students who have gone through the housing lottery process that for the past few years, Capital has struggled to provide sufficient housing. Numerous students over the past three years have been placed on waiting lists, and not informed about their housing situation until well into the summer. In the past, the housing situation has always been worked out. Space was found, and students were moved into what may not have been their preferred residence hall, but were given a place to stay nonetheless.
This year saw for the first time in recent memory, an inability for the university to provide housing for all returning students.
This housing issue has been a direct result of the university’s much higher enrolment in recent years. The incoming undergraduate class of 2017 is the second largest class Capital has ever had with an expected enrolment of 714 students, which is only six students shy of the record highest class enrolment which happened in 2010 with the entrance of the class of 2014 who are currently seniors.
2010 saw a drastic increase in enrolment compared to the previous year which saw only 610 incoming traditional undergraduate students (TUG’s), a difference of 110 students.
In fact, Capital’s enrolment has been steadily increasing since the 90’s. A report done by the university Division of Planning and Advancement entitled “Multiyear Enrollment Plan” lays out firmly the University’s plan for growth. A table on page sixteen of the report shows annual incoming TUG enrolment starting in 1996 with 506 incoming TUG’s, and ending in 2010 with 720. This made it so that in 2010 there were a total of 499 more total TUG’s on campus than there were only fourteen years previously.
However, in that time Capital has expanded student housing through the construction of the College Avenue Apartments, and the purchase of the Capital Apartments off of Astor Avenue, opening up more room for underclassmen by taking upperclassmen into new separate residence halls.
All of this expansion is not growth for growth’s sake, but rather a plan for the university to stay competitive with other universities within Ohio.
Throughout the Multiyear Enrolment Plan there are constant figures and graphs measuring Capital’s growth against average and median growth of other colleges and Universities. What this has meant for Capital is an ever increasing TUG population that is likely to climb ever higher for years to come.
But adding to the complexity of an ever-increasing student population is the uncertainty of exact class sizes. Each year there is no way of knowing the exact number of accepted high school students who will actually want to attend Capital.
Nichole Johnson, Capital’s Director of Media Relations and Communications, laid it out in very simple terms: “We set a target, and that target may just be one percent or two percent higher number of first time students than the year before… Sometimes you’re more successful than you think you are going to be, and sometimes you go over that target. In 2010 we were way more successful than we thought we were going to be, and that’s great! … Part of it is intentional and meant to grow the university systematically and gradually. But sometimes there’s more of a demand than you anticipate.”
Typically, when Capital has a problem like this where there are students that are without housing, they may house them at places such as the Trinity Apartments, which have been used in the past in cooperation with Trinity Lutheran Seminary. However this option is no longer available to the university and therefore precious space for housing that Capital desperately needed was lost.
Over the past few years however, Capital has had its eyes on the future and on expansion. Capital now owns a great deal of houses along Sheridan Avenue between Mound Street and Astor Avenue, along with some homes along Astor behind the university.
The most recent purchases for Capital have been two new houses within the neighborhood, as well as a multiple acre plot of land located between Sheridan and Alum Creek. This gives Capital the real estate to accommodate a new residence hall, should the University ever need one. But according to Johnson, a new building is not in the administration’s immediate plans.
“When you look at getting a new building, whether it’s buying a new building or building one.” Johnson said, “Those are long-term multimillion dollar investments.”
But more specifically, capacity hasn’t been close enough to warrant a new residence hall as Capital has yet to reach 100 percent capacity in its halls. Even now, true capacity cannot be determined as there are many students who may choose to drop out or transfer, thus opening up new spaces in the residence halls.
Students however point to perceived poor conditions within the residence halls as reasons to construct new ones. Residence halls that are among the most complained about by underclassmen are Saylor-Ackerman (SA) and Lohman which are both over three quarters of a century old and lack such things as air conditioning which can make the first few weeks living in them very uncomfortable.
Capital realizes these concerns that students have when it comes to housing, but they can only do so much with the limited resources they are given. So Capital has opted for gradual improvements to the residence halls such as the replacement of the roof on Lohman to add more insulation and prevent heat absorption which is among the biggest concerns from freshmen on the third floor. Last year, Capital renovated the lobby and basement of Lohman as well, and installed an air conditioned workout facility in the basement.
One of the biggest factors that goes into this housing shortage is the increased numbers of students who are opting to remain in campus housing through their senior year. According to an email sent out by Jennie Smith, Director of Residence life, to the new residents of Fort Rapids, “We have worked hard in recent years to enhance the campus-living experience for our students, and it’s paying off. Interest in living on campus is at an all-time high.”
However for many upperclassmen this is not the case as many students would prefer to move off campus, but are kept from doing so because some financial aid packets are conditional for students living in campus housing.
But according to Johnson, this is just another obstacle that they have to work around, “By policy the university incentivizes students to live on campus. It’s a policy that we’re not going to walk away from.” Johnson said, “There is a correlation between living on campus and student success because there is a correlation between living on campus and student engagement. The more engaged a student is, the more successful they’re likely to be.”
Throughout the entire process, Residence Life has been focusing on one thing: ensuring that the problem is handled with the student’s best interests at heart. “Our goal for residence life” Smith said, “is to make [campus housing] more than just a place to lay your head.”
According to Smith, a lot of planning went into where to put these students over the course of just a few short months, and was stressed because of the lack of options that they possessed to solve the problem. “We have lots of options, right? No we don’t, unfortunately.” Smith said.
At most universities, when running into problems such as these, students without immediate housing are put up in common areas or unoccupied rooms within the residence halls that would otherwise not house students.
Rather than housing students in the SA lounge, Residence Life sought other options. “We’ve been talking about what kind of experience we want to be able to provide for students.” Smith said, “Do we want to put them just anywhere? Or do we want it to be thoughtful and planned?”
The final decision to house the students at Fort Rapids revolved around the necessity to make the experience of living in temporary housing, as close to being in a residence hall as possible. “We’ll call it ‘extension housing’,” Smith said, “because we will have staff and programming there as well. We have it all planned out.”
And Residence Life really does have a program designed to accommodate these students who would otherwise feel very separated from the rest of the student body. “To us the experience is the same.” Assistant Director of Residence Life Jon Geyer said, “We’re not treating it any differently than one of our other residence halls. We will have an RA over there who will have the same expectations that RA’s on campus have through programming, and through ensuring that students are living up to university standards. We will be treating the experience exactly the same because we want them to have the same experience.”
Despite their best efforts however, some considerations for students were overlooked such as keeping those students that were without housing informed about the process, and updated once information became available.
Sophomore Hayden Brown is one of those students who will live in Fort Rapids because of an error in the lottery system that resulted in him not getting a lottery number.
He complained that Residence Life didn’t give him any helpful information for housing the next year, “They haven’t kept me in the loop. I have had problems with res life every time I have dealt with them,” Brown said “I’ve had to drive down to capital twice to get their attention”
“In hindsight, it’s fair to say, students should have been informed sooner.” Johnson said in agreement with some of the sentiment shared by sophomores living in Fort Rapids.
Sophomore Brian Rosfelder, who will also be living at Fort Rapids, had a similar experience. “After having no room assignment at the end of July,” said Rosfelder, “I started to get worried and decided to contact Residence Life and find out where I would be place, whether or not I would be living on campus, and if they had found a roommate for me. It took me two weeks to get a hold of [Jennie Smith].”
For Rosfelder, the lack of communication is what ultimately frustrated him the most with this whole process, “I expected to not immediately get a room, but I also expected some interest in my situation at some point and received nothing until I contacted them.”
Brown however admitted that after Smith’s email, laying out the plan to house him in Fort Rapids, he was set slightly at ease. “It sounded like a pretty good plan, the email was very well written.”
Brown’s biggest issue with the whole situation is actually the amount of attention it has gotten on Facebook, “The whole thing has been blown out of proportion. My girlfriend thinks it is funny, but I don’t.”
He even went as far as to even defend Residence Life in the face of increased scrutiny on social media, “I feel bad for the res life people because everyone is pissed at them. I don’t think there is a good solution to what is going on. They can’t win… But I think they have done a pretty good job with it.”
Brown also thinks that what lies at the heart of the issue is that the students aren’t properly informed of the situation. “Everyone has an opinion. Most of the people trying to develop opinions haven’t even read the email so they are running on second or third hand opinions… it’s ridiculous.”
But despite his recognition of the good that Residence Life has done, he still acknowledges that living like this is still an inconvenience, despite the popular belief that living at a water park might be fun. “What they are missing is that we don’t have.” Brown said.
“I am still frustrated with the situation,” Rosfelder said, “it has been frustrating in general since I expected to be moving onto campus in a week and now I’m moving into a water resort eleven minutes away instead.”
But both the administration and Residence Life has emphasized that this situation is only a short term plan. Students can plan on being moved back on to campus once space opens up after a few weeks.
The university also has plans on learning from this so that the same mistakes may not be made again. “This is the first time we have gone through this in recent history.” Johnson said, “And so I think that when everything settles, people will look back to see what we did right and what we did wrong. Because if this happens again next fall, then we want to have a protocol and deadlines in place. Right now we are making educated decisions, but we’re doing it for the first time.”
abutts@capital.edu
