Do you live on campus? Are you worried that you won’t be able to live on campus?
When asked about on campus housing, sophomore Caroline Caudle said,” At the rate that we’re accepting students and freshman, I don’t think there’s enough housing to hold all of us.”
Sophomore Brandy Lyda had similar sentiments and said,” I think it gives people a place to live but that there’s not always lot for people to live on campus just because you have people who can’t get an apartment and have to live on campus but then they get put on a waiting list of 300 people and it limits there choices to come back to Western. ”
Residential Living provides answers.
The Brown Building. Photo by Allyson Wainright
Executive Director Bryant Barnett talks about current housing, waitlists and future housing plans at Western Carolina University.
Barnett’s job as Executive Director of Residential Living is to make sure all three areas of Residential Living work in harmony together. The three parts are operations, electronics and Residential Living. He also plays a role in the planning of new residence halls.
There are 4,560 beds available on campus. Once Residential Living takes out reserved spots for students required to live on campus that leaves between 2,220 and 2,225 beds left for upperclassmen. The students required to live on campus include first year students and transfer students.
The Gold housing selections finished up Feb.17 and in theory everyone should have housing.
There is around 100 people who have turned in housing agreements and paid the deposit that haven’t selected any housing.
It’s still early in the waitlist process, but Barnett expects they should be able to help the first 50 on the waitlist, if not all of them. They will be able to determine how many students they can house as students change rooms or decide to live off campus.
As of March 16. there are 168 students on the waitlist.
There was a much larger waitlist last year because Buchannan was not available for selection. That left 200 beds not available.
A new residence hall is expected to be built by spring 2019. By the time Students come back in August, they should be able to see the shell of the building Barnett said.
The new residence hall will be a five story building with a brick exterior and double rooms with a shared bathroom.
“If all goes as scheduled, next year it would open and we would have roughly have 600 more beds,” said Barnett. “The likelihood of a waiting list would go down next year. ”
Barnett mentioned plans for renovation of Scott and Walker residence halls. It is in the early stages of planning. It is apart of a larger plan to update, replace or renovate all buildings through the 2025/2026 school year. They have a timeline of when certain buildings are expected to be offline.
“It could be that one year that were way up and have more space and the next year we’re way down,” Barnett said.
Sophomore Abby Morley said,” I do wish that if they start to build a new dorm or renovate that they don’t accept more students than we can hold.”
Many parents and students are wondering how NC Promise will effect on campus housing.
There’s an increase in the number of transfers students trying to come here. Barnett said that it seems like a lot of students and parents aren’t aware of the NC promise or don’t know what it is.
Barnett said that there’s also predictions of 500 incoming students entering the Honors College which is a significant increase from NC Promise with the amount of scholarship money being given away. Due to this increase, Albright is still going to be for first year students, but Benton will be for upper classmen.
Caudle said,”I am hopeful that on campus housing will improve.”
