Virginia Tech: Issues of Over Acceptance of Students

Virginia Tech, every year grows with popularity. One way to tell of this fact is by how many students are attending the university. "Every year, excluding 2016 Virginia Tech has accepted more and more students." Kenneth Belcher, Senior Associate Director for Housing Services stated.  With Virginia Tech being a popular college that people want to attend and the second happiest college in America, President Sands believes that it is the perfect opportunity to expand. From the article, President Sands shares aspirations for Virginia Tech to become a global land-grant university, he projected that by 2023, there will be 30,000 undergraduates. In 2015, there were 25,000 undergraduates. Adding 5,000 may not seem like a lot of students, but dealing with where to put these students can make campus seem cramped. Housing has to ask the questions, "Will there be enough classroom space? What about living spaces?"

Belcher stated that the university does have plans to build more dorms, but building dorms is costly. Right now, Housing and Residence Life are almost done with the renovation of O'Shaughnessy Hall, a dorm that has seven floors, housed 341 students in 2016. This renovation is a 21.5 million dollar project as told by the article, O'Shaughnessy Hall Renovation. Belcher said that the residence hall really does need a face lift. "The systems needed some love... and we want to change it into a residential college." 

This year, there are two fewer buildings as the tear down of Monteith Hall and Thomas Hall occurred. The tearing down actually results in the final stage of redesigning the Upper Quad, where New Cadet Hall and Pearson Hall were recently built to help with the redesign and incoming cadets. 

Even with renovations and closing down resident halls, Housing and Residence Life always expects temporary housing to be an issue. Temporary housing is normal for the university. "Usually we expect 170 students to be in temporary every year," says Belcher.

Residential Advisors expect to have their own room whenever doing their job, but Belcher disposes that theory. "Residential Advisors are told during their trainings that they should be considered lucky if they do not have a roommate." He also goes onto say that students are paired with Residential Advisors before being put into a temporary space such as a study lounge. 

2015 was the worst year for Housing and Residence Life as the construction of the new cadet dorm, Pearson Hall, was in progress and the storm of students who accepted Virginia Tech's offer had a role on temporary housing. Housing and Residence Life needed to put students in a living space. After all of the study lounges were converted into dorm rooms, and the Residential Advisors were already paired with a student, they looked to Foxridge apartments to rent out spaces for students. Some students may not have expected their first year at Virginia Tech to be off campus in an apartment, or crammed in a lounge, or living with their Residential Advisor, but everyone's college experience is different.