Gas crunch makes campus housing popular

• By JORDAN BLUM
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: Aug 7, 2008 - Page: 1A - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Just a few months ago, LSU planned on requiring new students to live on campus.

Now, on-campus housing is unexpectedly becoming so popular the university is turning people away for maybe the first time, school officials said.

“It’s been unprecedented,” said Steve Waller, LSU director of residential life.

“We were thinking we were in good shape, and then we saw the demand kind of skyrocket,” Waller said. “It’s a new situation. In the past we’ve been able to squeeze everyone in.”

Waller likens the phenomenon to a combination of new and renovated housing, improved on-campus dining and the wallet-breaking prices of gasoline keeping students within walking distance of their classrooms.

The gas prices almost certainly have some impact, Waller said, but it is impossible to tell how much.

The end result, though, is that LSU is overbooked by a handful of students and has a waiting list of nearly 50 more. About 4,930 students will live in traditional housing this fall, he said, not counting another nearly 600 students in married and graduate student housing.

“There’s been some frustration,” Waller said, admitting the resentment from some students and parents who will not be able to live where they want or cannot live on campus at all.

But there will still be at least 400 more students living on campus than last year, he said.

While LSU still ranks in the top 20 nationally in the “Dorms like Dungeons” category of Princeton Review’s unscientific survey, such information is a sign of outdated perceptions, said Eric Monday, LSU interim vice chancellor of student life and academic services.

More than 50 percent of the campus housing is new or renovated in the past 10 years, Monday said. That is highlighted by the newly reopened and expanded Blake Hall and Graham Hall, which will house the business and engineering residential college students.

LSU also has improved its student recreation facilities and its campus dining with the new 459 Commons dining hall, Monday said.

“We’ve seen an unbelievable response. The quality of life plays a major role in the recruitment and retention of our students,” Monday said, noting that LSU still has several years of work to go.