Posted on: Thursday, July 15, 2004
1,400 on waiting list for filled UH dorms
By Beverly Creamer
Advertiser Education Writer
The dire predictions are coming true: With fall enrollment booming, the University of Hawai'i-Manoa is in a dormitory crisis.
Most of the approximately 3,000 dorm rooms are assigned, about 1,400 students are on the waiting list and the housing office is receiving dozens of calls daily from anxious parents, some threatening to pull their children out of school.
It's one of the worst housing shortages at UH in recent memory and comes amid a particularly tight — and expensive — rental market on O'ahu that will make it difficult for students to find a place to stay.
And the fall semester begins in less than six weeks.
"We have major higher enrollment, we've done great recruiting, and it's come through and we have nothing to meet it with," said interim housing director Margit Watts. "We have no overflow."
O'ahu students, especially those living close to UH, get last priority for rooms on campus, and the shortage means that few of them could end up being accommodated.
"We've got O'ahu parents screaming because we've given no rooms to O'ahu students yet," Watts said. "We don't have the space."
Under university rules, dorm rooms must go first to freshmen, Neighbor Island students, Mainland students and foreign students, along with students receiving certain scholarship grants and exchange students, before more senior O'ahu students get their chance.
Lori Tomita said her 21-year-old son, Erik, an upperclassman, is angry that he hasn't heard anything about a room, while his younger brother, Todd, a freshman, has been assigned dorm space.
"We live in Wahiawa, and it's killing him just to drive right now to summer session," Lori Tomita said. "And on top of that he's trying out for the tennis team, and if he's not dorming, how is he going to get to practice on time? When he heard he may not get a dorm assignment, he was just so furious. We never had this problem before. ... He's telling me, 'I just want to quit and leave UH.' He just wants to transfer out so bad."
Back in May, with projected fall enrollment up by 6 percent and potentially more than 21,000 students at Manoa — the most in 25 years — administration officials worried how aging and finite facilities, particularly dorms and the number of classrooms and laboratories, would handle the influx.
Now the problem has come home to roost.
Essentially there are the same number of beds as there were last year, while enrollment is expected to be up by 1,100 students or more for the fall semester that begins Aug. 23. Final enrollment numbers won't be known until sometime in September.
A small increase in the number of rooms at the Hale Anuenue dormitory is being negated by the loss of about 40 beds at Gateway House and maybe four or five at Hale Noelani because they couldn't be repaired or had such extensive termite damage.
Meanwhile, the university will refer students to housing they know about, in particular hotels that have contacted the university and are willing to rent to students.
The university has not negotiated with any hotels for the fall semester this year as it did last year, Watts said, but may make arrangements with several smaller 200-room hotels to bulk up the dorm offerings for the spring semester.
Watts has been fielding more than 20 calls a day from irate parents like Sunnyvale, Calif., mother Janet Peace, whose 18-year-old son, Christopher, is a freshman in the honors program and still doesn't have housing.
"I've been calling once a week since the deadline date and been given all kinds of different answers from that department and finally called Margit," Peace said. "I can't afford to fly back and forth to O'ahu.
"We're feeling really nervous about this. All the other students at his school, their colleges had sent them packets and (UH didn't) and none of that was on the Web. At this point we're kind of stuck. ... I'm almost in panic mode because I don't know what to do."
Watts said all the dorm rooms have been assigned to the first-come eligible students in the priority categories, but more rooms are becoming available as students miss deadlines for scheduled payments.
Just yesterday 200 rooms opened up because of nonpayment by students who had been assigned rooms.
"I have 900 students who sent their applications in on time (plus another 600 who were late) and yet we haven't been able to give them anything yet," Watts said. "Out of those 900, they'll get first dibs (on the rooms opening up.) About 240 are from Neighbor Islands, the Mainland and foreign countries, so if 240 beds open, they get them."
That may give Leanne Emberson, from Maui, some hope. Her son Noa, a 21-year-old senior, hasn't received a dorm room, and doesn't know if he'll get one.
"We've been praying hard, but I don't know," said his mother. "He also found out there's no more parking. He can't even pay for parking."
Emberson said her son and three of his roommates from last year would have to look for an off-campus rental if they don't get dorm rooms, but she wasn't optimistic about that option.
"I don't know who would rent to four guys," she said. "They're really decent, but unless you know someone who would rent to you, how would they know that with the prevailing idea that a lot of people think 'Oh, guys going to college are drinkers.' "
Watts hopes that another batch of dorm rooms will open up July 26 when the next deadline for a payment of $225 comes due.
For Mainland families, like the Peaces, that's cutting things close. They're scheduled to fly to Hawai'i Aug. 11 to get their son settled in.
"We don't know anybody (in Hawai'i)," she said. "... When they recruited him at his junior college, Deanza, he was so excited. He went to College Night and they had a Hawai'i table and it was good marketing.
"You may be telling the marketing people to step it up and do a good job, but (it should be) not too good a job," she said. "If they're not going to have housing, they should have told us."
Reach Beverly Creamer at bcreamer@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8013.
