Albatross and Polaris: On the Fall 2022 Housing Crisis    

In Fall 2022, TAMUG saw a major increase in student population, with an approximate total of 1,500 students needing on-campus housing.  As the capacity for on-campus housing that semester was greatly exceeded, housing staff was faced with a difficult decision: How would Campus Living and Learning accommodate this influx of students that had arrived? 

Campus Living and Learning’s answer to this predicament was to purchase the dormitories across from the campus, known as Pelican Shores. The two additional halls purchased gave the university an extra 150 rooms to utilize for students needing campus housing. 

The price of the rooms was decided by Campus Living and Learning according to room layouts, and was lowered partly to encourage voluntary residents. The university rents out the apartments, so they are in charge of dealing with the maintenance requests, yet university staff is not in charge of the maintenance. This arrangement led to many issues for students.

“At 8 AM on a Thursday, some maintenance workers drilled a hole in my roof to get rid of mold that I had put in a request for a few days before and it went unfixed for an entire week,” stated a student living in Albatross in Oct. 2022. 

“The wifi is terrible, when it is working, “ said another resident, “and sometimes it cuts out completely. It is not built to handle the amount of people that live there.  During fall break when people were coming back the internet speeds had reached double digit bytes.”

_{Trash piled up behind Albatross, Fall 2022.}

Even with the housing at Albatross and Polaris having cost students around $1,000 less compared to on-campus dorms, the sentiment that came from students living in Pelican Shores was that they nonetheless felt ripped off. This problem was felt doubly by students who were assigned to those halls.

According to Director of Campus Living and Learning, Neil Golemo, the campus was put in a complicated situation before the semester had started. Each academic year, the housing department is given an estimate of the amount of students who will be staying. Over the summer, that number was unknown until right before the fall semester started. In the weeks leading up to the start of the semester, Campus Living and Learning had to find housing for 170 students over the max capacity of campus housing. 

The university was given two options, Golemo says: “It was either using the Albatross and Polaris dorms or telling students to defer to spring.” Once Campus Living and Learning realized that they would have to get a contract with Pelican Shores, they reworked the building into acceptable conditions. 

Both staff and students felt communication issues concerning the buildings’ maintenance. Describing his experience with the Pelican Shores owners, Golemo said,“Honestly, they don't want to have it anymore, and because of that they would put in the bare minimum resources into it. They don't have a person on site. I didn't feel great about having to do it, until I realized that if we didn't do it, students would be deferred to spring.” Regarding the fall semester student population issue, he continued, “We filled the halls up, while making it as cheap as possible.” 

When asked why the original lease with Pelican Shores, signed by the university following Hurricane Ike, hadn’t been renewed, Golemo said, “After the university got out of the original lease in 2019, and [the dorms] hadn't been well kept, we told them that. And they knew. We ended up making an offer on it, a– in my opinion–good offer but they thought they could get more.” 

The housing contract with Pelican Shores that was in place through Fall 2022 is now expired, with housing rates having risen from the semester’s flat rate of $2,000 to $3,650 for single-bed dorms and $2,500 for double-bed dorms in Spring 2023. Students placed in Albatross and Polaris have since had the option to move into on-campus dorms, though approximately half of them--largely students who volunteered to live in these halls--have chosen to remain in their rooms.

Campus Living and Learning continues to address issues with conditions at Albatross and Polaris to the best of their abilities. Neil Golemo stated in a followup interview that wishes to specifically give credit to housing coordinator Marishka Wright for receiving and handling student concerns from Albatross and Polaris, walking between the complex grounds and campus grounds on a daily basis throughout the fall semester.