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LSU woefully short of dorm space

Aug 26, 2010 by Jordan Blum

LSU started fall classes Monday, having to turn away more students seeking on-campus housing than ever.

The housing demand has reached the point that LSU is seeking permission to renovate and reopen to students the outdated Kirby-Smith Hall that has been used for storage and office space in recent years.

The housing standby list that peaked at about 1,000 students — now has 688 students — is the result of a somewhat unexpected jump in freshman enrollment this fall, LSU officials said.

“The good news is we’ve seen a real surge in demand; the bad news is we can’t accommodate it all,” said LSU Chancellor Michael Martin. “We’re a little surprised at the surge we got this year.”

The reopening of the 45-year-old Kirby-Smith facility is a necessity until new housing is completed, he said.

“It is an ugly building, but it’s functional,” Martin said. “It’ll be three-to-four-year max utilization while we bring some new construction online.”

The plan is to use $1.7 million in student housing fee revenues to spruce up Kirby-Smith and open up more than 350 extra beds next year. The concept requires LSU Board of Supervisors approval on Friday.

The issue also involves having some student housing currently shut down for renovations before new housing can be built, said Steve Waller, LSU director of residential life. East Laville residence hall and its 300 beds are closed for renovations until 2012 and the delayed rebuilding of Graham Hall and its 350 beds is scheduled to be done in 2012 too, Waller said.

The last step involves building a new residence hall with 500 beds on the west side of campus to be completed in 2015, Waller said, when Kirby-Smith could again be taken out of operation, if not sooner.

LSU Student Government President J Hudson said it is disappointing that some students who want to live on campus are being turned away, although he characterized the overall growth as positive.

“But with that growth you also have expectations you have to fill, and housing is one of those expectations,” Hudson said. “It looks bad on the university that we don’t have enough room.”

In spite of budget cuts and tuition increases, Martin said he is pleased the enrollment is on the rise.

Early estimates show freshman enrollment at more than 5,400 new freshmen, up from about 4,700 last year and close to record classes of about 5,700 new freshman, according to the university. LSU’s nearly 18,300 applications this past year also set an all-time record.

Part of the issue also involves record numbers of out-of-state students choosing LSU, Waller said, and a larger percentage of them want to live on campus initially.

The 2008 gasoline price increase first helped contribute to the greater demand of on-campus housing after LSU threw out plans to require that freshmen live on campus.

“Last year was the first year we did a (housing) standby list in the history of the school,” Waller said, noting that last year’s list peaked at 500 students.

Currently, LSU totals more than 4,700 beds on campus for typical undergraduates, about 200 beds fewer than two years ago. LSU has another 600 or so beds for married and graduate students housing.

“We’ve been saying for two years that housing on campus is limited,” Waller said. “We’ve tried to be very transparent.”

The key is for students to apply for housing as soon as they are accepted into the university, he said. All students who applied for housing April 1 or later were initially wait-listed this year, he said.

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