In a year of record female enrollment, Housing scrambles to find accommodations for freshmen girls.
Reporting done by Tanner Greer
LAIE- The incoming freshman class at BYU-Hawaii has discovered that at this university there is not enough housing and too many people.
The decision to demolish Hale 3 and build a new Hale in its place has left the university with a housing shortfall. The Housing Department has made changes across campus to find replacement accommodation for the incoming freshmen. Late in August the male tenants living in Hale 2 were transferred to Hales 4 and 6 so that the building could be used as an all-female dorm. The piano lounge in Hale 4 and the barber room in Hale 6 have been converted to residential living spaces to make room for these extra tenants. The entrance requirements for Hale 1, an all-female dorm with apartment style kitchens and furnishings, have also changed. The Hale was previously limited to students who had completed 60 credits and had paid a $50 fee to place themselves on a wait-list, but last week new freshmen moved into three of the Hale One lounges. Most surprising of all was Housing’s decision to convert Temple View Apartments (TVA) Building C, previously reserved for married couples, into single student housing for new freshmen girls.
LAIE- The incoming freshman class at BYU-Hawaii has discovered that at this university there is not enough housing and too many people.
The decision to demolish Hale 3 and build a new Hale in its place has left the university with a housing shortfall. The Housing Department has made changes across campus to find replacement accommodation for the incoming freshmen. Late in August the male tenants living in Hale 2 were transferred to Hales 4 and 6 so that the building could be used as an all-female dorm. The piano lounge in Hale 4 and the barber room in Hale 6 have been converted to residential living spaces to make room for these extra tenants. The entrance requirements for Hale 1, an all-female dorm with apartment style kitchens and furnishings, have also changed. The Hale was previously limited to students who had completed 60 credits and had paid a $50 fee to place themselves on a wait-list, but last week new freshmen moved into three of the Hale One lounges. Most surprising of all was Housing’s decision to convert Temple View Apartments (TVA) Building C, previously reserved for married couples, into single student housing for new freshmen girls.
In a post on the popular Facebook group Sell My Stuff @ BYUH, Penelope Larsen gave voice to the frustration many students felt with the new developments. Larsen, a student at BYU-Hawaii and a resident of TVA, urged students to “file a complaint against housing and file a complaint against the university” to protest the decision to house single girls in Building C. Within a week the post had received 155 comments and been ‘liked’ by 200 people—just under 1/10th of the student body.
The Housing department’s scramble to find open spots for the female students comes at a time when the ratio of girls to boys enrolled at the university is the widest it has been in recent memory. In a statement published on the official BYU-Hawaii Admissions Facebook feed on September 6, the Admissions department stated that the school will have enrolled 1 male to every 1.37 females. This means that only 42% of the student body is male—2% less than the previous lows of 44% in 2011 and 2013.
The Housing department’s scramble to find open spots for the female students comes at a time when the ratio of girls to boys enrolled at the university is the widest it has been in recent memory. In a statement published on the official BYU-Hawaii Admissions Facebook feed on September 6, the Admissions department stated that the school will have enrolled 1 male to every 1.37 females. This means that only 42% of the student body is male—2% less than the previous lows of 44% in 2011 and 2013.
In an interview with The Student Voice, director of Admissions James Faustino explained the imbalance: “There is one man for every three women that apply to the university. As long as there is that kind of disparity you will see more female students than male students here.” Faustino credits the lowered minimum missionary age with the difficulty the department has had keeping the ratio close to the standard 45-55%. “Our enrollment model has gone out the window with the change in the mission age and the new nine semester rule,” making it difficult to predict how many students accepted to BYU-Hawaii will eventually enroll here.
Faustino clarified, however, that this semester’s unusual gender ratio is not responsible for the shortage in female housing. The highest enrollment the school has seen was the Fall 2010 semester, with 2,780 students. More female students were enrolled then than are enrolled in the Fall 2014 semester. With 2,520 students registered at the start of the Fall 2014 semester, Faustino said, “we are housing 200-300 less than we should be able to.”
The process by which the number of students admitted to the university is decided is a complex one. It begins with the President’s Council, which has established a broad plan for the university’s future that calls for the number of students in attendance to increase to 2,800 with an eventual goal of enrolling 3,200 students at the school. The Admissions Department’s policy is to meet these goals by gradual increases in enrollment. The department creates a new report and plan at the beginning of each semester and modifies this plan on a month to month basis. The department has to juggle a dozen variables when deciding how many potential students will be sent acceptance letters: the number of potential students who have applied from different parts of the world, the ratio of boys to girls at the school, the percentage of accepted students they think will actually decide to come to the university, the number of current students who will transfer from other schools, the number that will return from or leave to serve missions, and the amount of students the Housing and Academics departments say they can accommodate.
Max Checketts, Vice President over Academics and a member of President’s Council, noted that the large number of students who delay their registration to the last moment make it particularly difficult for the university to predict how many students will be attending during a given semester. Over 200 students registered for the Fall 2014 semester after August 25.
Given all of these variables, Checketts told the Student Voice, “trying to hit [the number you plan for] is like trying to hit the center of a bulls eye on a moving train.”
Interdepartmental communication poses its own problems as well. A team from Admissions usually meets with the Housing director for a face-to-face meeting at the beginning of every semester to find out how many new female, male, and married students the University can house. Both Faustino and Checketts confirmed that the number they were given for the Fall 2014 semester was 2,700 students. Because they are not updated and made available to admissions throughout the semester unless specifically requested, “Housing’s numbers can be difficult to work with,” said Faustino. When buildings like Hale 3 are torn down and renovated it is not immediately clear to the Admissions department that Housing has not found additional accommodations to make up for the short fall. The director of Housing who was a part of these meetings, Lorraine Matagi, is no longer employed by BYU-Hawaii. The new director, Edwin Rogers, has spent much of his first few weeks making sure that incoming freshmen have somewhere to live.
The accommodations Housing eventually found for the female students are not without shortcomings. In many respects the freshmen in TVA Building C have one of the best deals on campus—they live in furnished apartments with full kitchens without ever having to put their name on a waitlist like other TVA or Hale 1 tenants. The freshmen who live there, however, report that life in Building C has its own challenges. “The biggest problem is privacy,” said one student living in the building. “Any man who walks by can see into our bedroom. Yesterday I saw one peering into it!”
These arrangements will not be permanent. “Winter Semester almost always has 50-100 less students than Fall” said Max Checketts. In the meantime, Checketts says he “invites students to be patient with the school. We now have a new Housing director who will give us better numbers in the future.”
This article was edited on 10 September to provide a more compelling leade.
*Want to help report on campus events? Submit your article here, or join us at our meetings Thursdays at 6pm in the Aloha Center room 132!
Faustino clarified, however, that this semester’s unusual gender ratio is not responsible for the shortage in female housing. The highest enrollment the school has seen was the Fall 2010 semester, with 2,780 students. More female students were enrolled then than are enrolled in the Fall 2014 semester. With 2,520 students registered at the start of the Fall 2014 semester, Faustino said, “we are housing 200-300 less than we should be able to.”
The process by which the number of students admitted to the university is decided is a complex one. It begins with the President’s Council, which has established a broad plan for the university’s future that calls for the number of students in attendance to increase to 2,800 with an eventual goal of enrolling 3,200 students at the school. The Admissions Department’s policy is to meet these goals by gradual increases in enrollment. The department creates a new report and plan at the beginning of each semester and modifies this plan on a month to month basis. The department has to juggle a dozen variables when deciding how many potential students will be sent acceptance letters: the number of potential students who have applied from different parts of the world, the ratio of boys to girls at the school, the percentage of accepted students they think will actually decide to come to the university, the number of current students who will transfer from other schools, the number that will return from or leave to serve missions, and the amount of students the Housing and Academics departments say they can accommodate.
Max Checketts, Vice President over Academics and a member of President’s Council, noted that the large number of students who delay their registration to the last moment make it particularly difficult for the university to predict how many students will be attending during a given semester. Over 200 students registered for the Fall 2014 semester after August 25.
Given all of these variables, Checketts told the Student Voice, “trying to hit [the number you plan for] is like trying to hit the center of a bulls eye on a moving train.”
Interdepartmental communication poses its own problems as well. A team from Admissions usually meets with the Housing director for a face-to-face meeting at the beginning of every semester to find out how many new female, male, and married students the University can house. Both Faustino and Checketts confirmed that the number they were given for the Fall 2014 semester was 2,700 students. Because they are not updated and made available to admissions throughout the semester unless specifically requested, “Housing’s numbers can be difficult to work with,” said Faustino. When buildings like Hale 3 are torn down and renovated it is not immediately clear to the Admissions department that Housing has not found additional accommodations to make up for the short fall. The director of Housing who was a part of these meetings, Lorraine Matagi, is no longer employed by BYU-Hawaii. The new director, Edwin Rogers, has spent much of his first few weeks making sure that incoming freshmen have somewhere to live.
The accommodations Housing eventually found for the female students are not without shortcomings. In many respects the freshmen in TVA Building C have one of the best deals on campus—they live in furnished apartments with full kitchens without ever having to put their name on a waitlist like other TVA or Hale 1 tenants. The freshmen who live there, however, report that life in Building C has its own challenges. “The biggest problem is privacy,” said one student living in the building. “Any man who walks by can see into our bedroom. Yesterday I saw one peering into it!”
These arrangements will not be permanent. “Winter Semester almost always has 50-100 less students than Fall” said Max Checketts. In the meantime, Checketts says he “invites students to be patient with the school. We now have a new Housing director who will give us better numbers in the future.”
This article was edited on 10 September to provide a more compelling leade.
*Want to help report on campus events? Submit your article here, or join us at our meetings Thursdays at 6pm in the Aloha Center room 132!