By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Juniors and seniors planning on living on campus next fall may have to make other arrangements.
And some students with campus housing will be living across the tracks in an apartment complex in the 500 block of North Enterprise. The university is leasing the complex for five years from Greenbriar Properties.
Because of the planned closing of Harshman Quadrangle, the university cannot guarantee on-campus housing to juniors and seniors, though it will be able to accommodate first year students and sophomores.
“We won’t have enough beds,” said Sarah Waters, director of Residence Life.
The closing of the last two buildings in the Harshman Quadrangle and the leasing of the Greenbriar complex will give BGSU beds for about 6,100 students, that’s about 400 less than this academic year.
And no new dorm construction is in the wings. The university will take another look at its housing master plan next year with new construction maybe in 2020.
Waters said about 600 juniors and seniors wish to live on campus. About 100 of those are residence hall advisors, and they will have rooms. “We want upper class leadership in the residence halls,” Waters said.
About another 130 are in fraternities and sororities, and they can live in the Greek Village.
The housing crunch comes as BGSU has started enrolling larger classes, and is striving to retain more of those students. That’s good news, she said.
Older students won’t be completely shut out, however. Waters said the university knows that some students need to live on campus beyond their sophomore year. It may because of scholarships they receive or because of a disability.
Students can apply for housing, and the university will try to accommodate them. She encouraged students to reach out to the Residence Life office. “We encourage students to fill out the application so that we can make decisions regarding their housing by early December. “
“BGSU recognizes that these changes to on-campus housing are a significant difference from how on-campus housing was offered in the past,” she said.
Parents on the BGSU Parents Private Facebook Group had a number of issues with the university’s decision.
Several said they had been told during campus tours and orientation that students have the option of staying on campus for the full four years.
Parents were also concerned about the lack of notice they received forcing sudden changes in plans. They are concerned off-campus housing will fill up before their offspring can find friends to live with and then a place to live in.
Some of the comments were from the parents of first-year students who said they may not have come to BGSU if they knew on-campus housing would not be available for all four years.
Now they feel pressured to find off-campus housing and are concerned the increase demand will make apartments harder to find. Students now must also find others who will want to share a place with them.
A few parents urged calm. They said that the closing of Harshman has been known for a few years. They also noted that off-campus housing is less expensive.
Waters said that even with closing the two buildings at Harshman, the university will still offer the same range of cost options. Depending on occupancy and amenities rooms cost from $2,725 to $3775.
Harshman dorms that are being closed, she said, were mostly occupied by first-year students. Few students requested to live in them a second year.
Waters said some improvements have been made to the dorms, but not as many as elsewhere.
The closing of Harshman is part of a move to consolidate housing in the campus core. It will leave Kreischer Quadrangle as the only dorm complex on the east side of campus.
Waters wasn’t sure when the Harshman Quadrangle will come down. Electrical service upgrades are being made and there’s an electrical load center in the building. Electrical service to the ice arena and Mileti Center needs to be rerouted and upgraded before that can be taken offline.
