On Monday, Aug. 21 – the first day of classes – sophomore business management major Jessica Saunders spent her afternoon moving into the Quad 1 Annexes modular building with her mother, Roxanne. She and her mother had been waiting to move into the building since Friday, Aug. 18, when they arrived on campus. They had to stay in a hotel over the weekend until they were notified they were cleared to move in on Monday at 2 p.m.
After being cleared to move into the modular building, Saunders and her mother noticed her room had a lifted bed – which she had specified needed to be lowered because of her ADA accommodations. While her bed was lowered later that day, Jessica felt her concerns hadn’t been listened to.
Saunders’s housing concerns are a few of the many concerns students have shared this fall. With Virginia State recording its highest freshman and transfer enrollment totals over the last two years, the university has had to house students across seven hotels, in on-campus modular buildings, and neighboring apartments.
There are shuttles that bring students to and from campus to their hotel and apartments. The decision to place students in on-campus modulars was officially released through a press release in June 2023.
Some students, like Imani Meade, a sophomore visual arts major who lives at a hotel, feel that her off-campus housing makes her college life difficult.
“Last year, I was here on campus in Quad 1, and everything was around me, and I had access to everything,” Meade said. “Now I have to wait to get on the shuttle to get where I need to be and do what I have to do… it puts a time limit on what I do.”
Residence Live and Housing communicated that Meade should expect to be moved on campus in September.
Alexus Adams, junior criminal justice and English double major who also lives in a hotel, says she sometimes feels ‘unsafe’ at the hotel.
“Students were also told in the beginning that there would be VSU security supervising the area where they live in the hotels, but there is no one on duty,” Adams said.
Some students feel that the move-in process this year was unorganized.
“It threw everything out of wack for me,” Saunders said. “I didn’t know whether I was supposed to bring all my stuff to campus [to move into the modulars] because it wasn’t ready on time. I didn’t know how I was supposed to prepare anything.”
Residence Life and Housing, on the other hand, says they faced challenges in the housing process, some of which were ‘out of their control.’
“Virginia State University Residence Life and Housing has taken over University Apartments at Ettrick or UAE,” said Desmond Crawley, Senior Housing Coordinator for the Department of Residence Life and Housing. “A part of that was us – the University, ABM, and facilities management – having to go in and do the maintenance [on the apartments]. That was an extensive project that we could not get into [to start] until after July 1. That was one major challenge that we faced, with getting an apartment complex, three buildings, turned over in an effort for it to be move in ready for students in time for classes. From an engineering perspective and inspection perspective, they also needed to make sure that the building was safe before we started moving students in. And so that also posed a challenge for us from a housing perspective.”
They also faced other challenges, like student “no-shows,” where students enrolled for housing but never moved in on-campus.
Crowley says that RLH “overcame those challenges eventually.”
“I pray that students and families understand our plight. We worked hard,” Crowley said. “There were nights that I didn’t leave here until close to 10 p.m. because we had to go through a major overhaul of shifting students around to accommodate the fact that they had traveled so far and already landed on our campus, and needed somewhere to stay. And so we did that.”
Crowley also says that out of the close to 4,000 students that registered for housing this year, three-quarters of the students requested a single space.
Dr. Makola Abdullah, president of Virginia State University, says he hears students’ issues with the housing process.
“I understand the disappointment many people have with housing, just as I understand the disappointment many people have with parking. It is not at all possible for everyone to have to kind of assignment that they would like. As it relates to singles, we simply do not have enough singles on campus. But also, with our policies, we mandate that our freshmen live on campus. So it becomes critically important that we provide the housing first for those that we in our own policies have mandated to live on campus. Virginia State University has really worked overtime to house as many students as possible.”
President Abdullah says that Virginia State is expected to have nearly 5,000 students, with 4,000 students housed by the University. He says most institutions do not house ‘over 50 percent of their students.’
“On many campuses, it is impossible for upperclassmen to get into university housing. While I understand, and I do not want to minimize anyone’s disappointment – every student should be treated with the highest priority – the fact is that one, we don’t have enough housing, and because we don’t have enough, it means that everyone won’t be able to get it. Secondly, it means that everyone won’t be able to get what they want.”
While Residence Life and Housing expects to house students in hotels and modulars for at least the next year, there are talks of a new residence hall being built.
“We are currently working to solidify plans to build a new residence hall,” said President Abdullah. “The challenge with building new, permanent structures is that they take a minute. And even now, with getting the financing to get a new dorm, there’s not a timeline that will get a new dorm up by next fall. We’re shooting for fall of 2025 to get a new residence hall up.”
