Being able to live on campus during college can make a big difference in a student’s experience. On-campus living gives students the opportunity to create their own small community while also having easier access to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s campus, even after classes are over.
Though the benefits of living on campus are enough to define a college experience, a negative experience with on-campus housing has the possibility of ruining an otherwise good experience.
When asked about their housing experience, most students did not have many concerns. Raheem Harris, a junior majoring in business, currently lives in The Heritage Apartments and has had no issues with housing. For him, everything has been a relatively relaxed process. When a student did have something to say, maintenance was cited as a main concern. Alexandria Scott, a sophomore majoring in criminal justice, is a resident assistant, or RA, and has to answer the duty phone and help her residents respond to issues. To her, one of the biggest issues are maintenance requests not being completed, requiring students to keep calling about them.
“Because we have so many residents with so many problems, some things are… deemed as emergency, and then some things aren’t,” Scott said. “So… if a resident calls at a certain time, they wouldn’t get something fixed, because it’s not technically an emergency.”
Scott Hebert, the director of Facility Management for the University, confirmed the process of receiving a work order Alexandria Scott described. Hebert said when a student places a work order, maintenance aims to go and look at the issue within 24 hours to decide the severity level of the order.
“Once the technicians go in and make an assessment of what’s going on, they will come back and prioritize which work orders need to be addressed first, if it can be addressed right then and there, they’ll do it,” Hebert said. “If not, they’ll come back, reorganize it, prioritize it, order any parts they need to have […] to get it addressed.”
This year, for the month of January, Hebert said there were 2,572 open work orders for maintenance to address for the whole university, and 2,124 are housing related. Of the 2,124, they were able to complete 862 of the orders, leaving 1,262 orders left over from January. To address the large amount of housing requests there is a maintenance team just for housing issues. The team has people from a specific trade, like plumbing or carpentry, on one team dedicated to tackle housing work orders.
Another big concern some students raised was how students with housing scholarships from the University are not allowed to live in The Heritage Apartments and have very limited space in Legacy Apartments.
Noa Barras, a sophomore majoring in strategic communication, is a scholarship student who currently lives in Agnes Edwards Hall, but previously wanted to live in Legacy Apartments with her friends. “It just really stinks because, especially for scholarship students…, we clearly don’t get any priority at all, which is a huge bummer. But you know… I’m grateful to have on campus housing,” Barras said.
Similarly, Megan Moore, a sophomore majoring in architecture, wanted to live in Legacy Park Apartments with her friends next year. Her friends have scholarships and she doesn’t, so they knew there was a strong chance they would not be able to get the apartment they wanted when applying.
Moore was disappointed to find that even though her and her friends were in a roommate group, the website would not allow her to place them in the open apartment they had seen while applying for housing. “And I do think, personally, that it’s unfair to scholarship students, but I’m sure that there’s a reason that it is the way that it is, but that doesn’t mean that I like it.” Moore said.
Barras also felt like the communication between housing and students is not always clear. In her experience, trying to communicate with housing has been very difficult at times. “I feel like nothing is communicated very well to us, and whenever we actually try to resolve issues, it usually takes a long time, or they’re just very vague about what we need to do,” Barras said.
The Office of University Housing did not respond to a request for an interview.