This is my last semester at NSU, and I’ve lived on campus all four years. I’ve been pretty lucky with housing selection, as I lived in The Commons my freshman year, managed to snag a single in the Cultural Living Center my sophomore year and have lived in Mako Hall for the last two years. While I’ve encountered issues in all of the dorms I’ve lived in, for someone like me who doesn’t have any local family and doesn’t have my own mode of transportation, living on campus is really the only way I’m able to attend classes and go to work. Even though I’ve been relatively lucky, the housing selection process has been an anxiety-inducing process every year.
This year, the housing selection process quietly changed to favor incoming freshmen and returning sophomores over juniors and seniors, giving younger students earlier selection times and leaving upperclassmen with fewer available spaces. Students who will be seniors during the next academic year were all but booted off campus, with the only housing options given being Rolling Hills A or Rolling Hills C or living at University Pointe. Before anyone tries to argue with me, Rolling Hills A and Rolling Hills C are not “on campus housing” if you need to cross a giant intersection and go past a golf course to reach them. Even Razor’s Edge seniors, who have received longstanding seniority when it comes to the housing selection process, only got access to one floor of Mako Hall. From what I heard the available rooms were filled in minutes.
I’ve had some amazing experiences at this university, but at this point I just feel bad for any of my friends who will be here in the coming years, especially those who will be graduating seniors next year. None of them were able to find housing on campus, and now some are resorting to the stress of maybe balancing the cost of off-campus housing or dealing with increased gas prices to get to classes on campus next year. It really seems like NSU only seems to care about new students, especially when it comes to student housing. Once you’ve been here a few years and given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the university, they conveniently seem to stop caring. NSU brags about being “home” for students but kicks the students who have stuck around the longest off campus into a sketchy apartment building or a hardly renovated old hotel. No wonder their retention rates decrease every year.
