Rutgers Students are surprised and disappointed at the state of on-campus housing at Rutgers. According to an article in the The Daily Targum entitled “Students placed in temporary housing still awaiting a place to call their own,” because of a higher demand for on-campus housing, some first-year and transfer students have been placed in temporary housing.
The article states that first year students have been placed in dorm lounges which will hold 3 to 6 people. These students will only pay half the price of room and board.
“That’s crazy. That’s really unfair to them,” said junior Fatima Elzahy. “Hopefully they’ll get actual housing soon.”
Associate vice president of Student Affairs, Joan Carbone, told the newspaper that “Rutgers anticipates that all students will be in permanent housing within a couple of months of the start of the semester… but this is not guaranteed. This process will begin once the University determines how many residents do not move into their assigned rooms.”
Rutgers is in the process of constructing new apartments on College Ave which are scheduled to be completed in 2015.
“I just don’t get it,” said senior Deanna Hendricks. “They built these new apartments on Livingston that were supposed to help and there still isn’t enough room. That’s terrible. What happened to the hotels they used to put people in?”
A few years ago when Rutgers had an overload of housing requests, they placed students in off-campus hotels and provided a bus service that went to and from campus. Carbone said there were not as many temporary housing students this year so a hotel would have been unnecessary.
With new residences under construction, Rutgers is ensuring that situations like this and years past do not happen again.