As the 2024-2025 academic year has begun and students have officially finished their first week at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, one lingering subject remains that of the unexpected residential student life some incoming students experienced.
Before the beginning of the semester, approximately 160 freshmen were assigned housing at two off-campus hotels due to record-breaking enrollment and shortage of housing for new students.
The Woodspring Suites, an extended stay hotel, and Wingate by Wyndham have been rented by the university for nearly $5 million to accommodate the students in need of housing, according to News 15.
Previous guests of the aforementioned hotels were instructed to evict the property in order to prepare the locations to better accommodate the university students and make their residential experience similar to that of on-campus housing.
The reasoning and decisions behind the circumstances and a better perspective of the students living at the hotels come after the first week of courses.
Dr. DeWayne Bowie, vice president for enrollment management, further clarified on the rise in enrollment, decisions behind satellite housing locations and possible prospective solutions to the temporary inconvenience.
The freshmen enrollment over the recent years have been increasing with nearly two-thirds of the class living on-campus.
“Big demand for the university. We’ve seen over the last five years a 32% increase in our freshmen class. As your freshmen class is growing, so does our overall enrollment.”
Bowie further elaborated on UL Lafayette’s on-campus living, explaining that the university’s intention during the recent years have been to create an environment that mimics that of a residential college.
“The cost of improvements that we’ve made in our on-campus living have led to returning students staying on-campus longer, and then you have a larger freshman class coming in and demanding more housing.”
Bowie acknowledged the situation as a bottleneck, but initiatives are underway to address the issue.
“We are having very serious conversations right now about the need to build more residential housing on campus. But until we have that, we need to utilize the resources we have in our community, which are the apartments and hotels, as we did this fall.”
Bowie clarified why plans of building new residential halls are being established now.
“You have to have that kind of demand for several years before you begin to build new facilities. So we’re at the point now where we feel we have enough evidence that there’s need and secure funding for new housing.”
The university began to see higher enrollment for Fall 2024 during the spring and sought ways in which the overflow students could be accommodated.
“We began to have conversations, about a year ago, with apartment complexes in our community.”
Bowie further commented that apartment complexes near the university were contacted in hopes of accommodating student overflow, but all of them had no vacancy.
“We then reached out to several hotels in the local area and had conversations about what we wanted to do. We did not want to have a situation with a hotel where there were mixed tenants. We talked to hotels about us actually leasing the entire hotel and it being on-campus living in an off-campus environment.”
Bowie concluded that closer hotel options with comparable rates to UL Lafayette housing costs were explored but none fully embraced the notion of leasing their entire facility to the university. The only two hotels which agreed to fulfill that need were the Woodspring Suites and Wingate by Wyndham hotels.
Cade Roy, president of the Student Government Association (SGA) and a political science senior, described the organization’s role and possible efforts to alleviate the concerns of the situation.
“We represent the student voice, general advocacy, symbolic advocacy, making sure that student concerns are represented to the university, so they know what students are feeling.”
Roy elaborated on the satellite housing decision.
“It’s a good, bad problem to have. Increased enrollment, there’s a lot of students coming back to school after COVID, getting an uptick in people who want to get that college experience and live on-campus.”
“There was a waitlist in the summer, and I think the university didn’t want to have to turn away students that wanted to live on or near campus. This sort of band-aid solution, obviously is not going to be permanent, will be a temporary solution until a more sustainable solution can be found,” said Roy.
One popular SGA committee, the Student Life committee, was revitalized during the summer and Roy hopes it serves as a beacon for students to voice any concerns in which the university must be made aware.
“It’s basically going to act as a catch-all for student concerns about everything that affects you as a student outside the classroom. I’m hoping to set the infrastructure in place so that every year the university knows they could come to this committee for how students are feeling.”
SGA meets with the president of the university, Dr. Joseph Savoie, every week during the academic year, where Roy concluded that the organization can be a voice in sharing the students’ concerns with housing and how that may advance into plans of developing more on-campus housing for students.
The Vermilion went to further observe the conditions at the satellite locations and speak to students living at the two hotels. While many expressed unique impressions, universally students shared that their current circumstance is much different from what they hoped their first year would bring.
The Woodspring Suites serves as a co-ed dormitory, with genders separated by floors as in some dorms on-campus.
Trey Turner, a freshman computer science major, shared his experience so far.
“When we first got here, it was cool. But then everything just started to go downhill. First it was with the WiFi, then the elevators weren’t working, I’m trying to bring groceries to my dorm, so I had to walk up the stairs. But they got that fixed.”
Benjamin Mouton, a freshman majoring in secondary education, who was currently moving out of the hotel to on-campus housing shared about his time there.
“It was pretty last minute. It was a few weeks before I moved-in that I found out that the hotels were even a thing. The room was pretty cool. I didn’t hate it too much. They just emailed me that my housing changed and then I moved-in. I’m even more excited to be living in Bonin now.”
The Wingate by Wyndham serves mainly as a girls’ dormitory.
Haley Mendez, a freshman mechanical engineering major, shared she expected to begin her semester at a dorm on-campus, however, despite the sudden change, her stay is overall well.
“It was a smooth move-in. So far, I like it, it’s so spacious. Housekeeping, I love them so much, they keep everything clean. The only thing is the buses, it takes them a bit to come pick us up.”
Autumn Doubleday, a freshman psychology major, shared similar impressions but felt distant from the college environment.
“It’s a nice place to live in. I feel a little bit detached, feel like it’s harder because it’s so far away. You have to time stuff. I’ll wake up early to get on the shuttle so I can go to campus and just stay there because I know I can’t go back.”
The university has ensured these students receive safety and as close to an on-campus living experience as possible with resident assistants, regular university police patrols and night time security guards present at each location.
As unexpected as the experience has been, the university is actively working on improving such conditions while the students come together and support one another during this temporary setback.
The Office of University Housing & Residential Life was contacted by The Vermilion to speak more on the matter, but no comments were made.