Record-breaking freshman class at Illinois State University sparks debate on Residence Hall overcrowding

Photo provided by University Housing

NORMAL, Ill. – Illinois State University has recently accepted its largest freshman class in nearly four decades. With ISU only having three residence halls, Tri Towers, Hewett-Manchester and Watterson Towers, to accommodate over 18,000 undergraduate students on campus, there has been some discussion of overcrowding within the residence halls. 

University Housing Services Director Stacey Mwilambwe shares how they plan to make accommodations for the influx of students.

“So right now, I think a lot of people forget that in the past, we used to have students that were in lounges, and we don’t this year for the first time in quite some time,” said Mwilambwe. “So where we’ve added triples in Watterson, those students have a reduced rate for that room type, and we advertised that room last year and put out videos and things like that for people to know.” 

Mwilambwe continues to share how University Housing plans to monitor future freshman classes to ensure there is enough availability within the residence halls.

“Well, I would say for this year we are always watching to see you know what recruitment does and that kind of thing, and so we are fortunate this year that the triples were able to absorb all of that need, and so our hope is that we can still keep our lounges available for years to come,” said Mwilambwe. “But that will depend on how much recruitment comes in that, but that is the nice thing about having lounges for students to use for quiet time.”

To ensure space utilization is continually optimized to accommodate the rapidly growing student body, Mwilambwe shares some strategies University Housing has implemented to help alleviate any overcrowding issues moving forward.

“So one of the things that we do is release requests. We do a release request session in the fall, and we usually do one in the spring, where we will allow students who have asked to be released from their live-on requirement to live on campus,” said Mwilambwe. “So we’ve allowed some students to do that, and so we’ve already opened ours up for the fall, and that’s closed, and then we’ll open up again in the spring, and so that helps to alleviate some of that as we’re trying to forecast how many students will be with us next year.” 

University Housing and ISU Admissions continue to work together in the enrollment process to calculate how many beds and rooms will be needed to accommodate students for the upcoming year. 

“We’re always talking with enrollment management to figure out how many students they’re recruiting so that we know who’s going to be coming down in terms of who has to live with us and then trying to make adjustments based on those different valves that we use so that we don’t are completely overcrowded,” said Mwilambwe.