Shelby Wilson | Journalist

The time has finally come where the University of Tennessee (UTK) has bit off more than it can chew. With this past school year experiencing record numbers in admissions and many students facing housing troubles, the future seems unpredictable. I feel inclined to speak upon this subject because I for one have experienced the craziness for myself: the campouts, the missed exams, the sickness, and everything else that was the consequence of the university’s over acceptance for the fall 2022 class. It is important for the University of Tennessee, as well as students and staff to be aware of the issues involving housing because we are living through this right now. It has only gotten worse in the past few years and change needs to be made.

UTK has increased in popularity over the years and it has never been more competitive than it was during this past application period. For students applying to enroll in fall 2023, there was a 40.2% increase in applications according to UTK Admissions. This sudden increase has caused a lack of housing for all the new students. There is even an issue forming with dorm space: There are approximately 5,800 dorm spaces according to UTK Housing. Yet in 2022, the university welcomed 6,846 new freshmen. Tennessee made headlines for having overflowing freshmen live at a local Holiday Inn nearby, and they even added it to their housing website’s list of dorms.

I am a freshman at Tennessee so I have been immersed in the housing struggles. There are few off-campus apartments that are easily walkable in any forms of weather, while the rest are a hike. It is not hard to figure out that the apartments on the main strip of campus were the complexes that everyone wanted. With the university’s occupancy rate rising above 98%, people would camp out for days in order to get an apartment lease, according to Mary Klinger, a writer for the WBIR news station. The campouts were not regulated and took place on school days. Classes did not work around them, so students would have to miss class and sometimes exams in order to stay in line for a lease. I myself missed an exam but luckily my professor understood the horrible situation everyone was in. It seems money-hungry and ridiculous to allow students to face these hardships just to have somewhere to live. Housing is a necessary part of college for many, as most people are hours away from home.

I talked to a student at UTK about some of the issues discussed above because she has experienced the hardships of housing firsthand. Devon Adamy is a sophomore at the University of Tennessee who works at the RecSports on campus. Adamy had a three-person apartment at one of the complexes on the strip. Since she already resided there, she had an easier process of switching rooms; or so she thought. 

“I was promised a lease and signed one for a five-bedroom with my selected roommates,” Adamy explained. “Then on signing day, they told us they over-signed and couldn’t offer us an apartment with all of us together.”

Adamy went into detail with me about the struggles her and her friends faced with finding a new place to live; we spoke of not only her room being given away, but also of the rising prices that are affecting housing. She explained how difficult it was because in her words, there “aren’t enough options for the amount of students.” Luckily, she and her friends got a place down the road, but when I asked her to describe her experience with housing this year, she said it was “very chaotic and hectic.”

All in all, it is fair to say that conditions need to be changed in accordance with housing at UTK. There is good news for the future though, since Tennessee dropped their acceptance rate this spring. Out-of-state acceptance went from 67% to a whopping 33.3% and in-state admissions dropped to 59.4%, according to UTK Admissions. Hopefully this means that there will be an end to the drama and students will no longer feel the stress of finding a place to live. On top of that, with new apartment complexes being built down the road, housing should be easier to find and easier to afford in upcoming years. But it is still important to remember the issues we students have faced and use that information to prepare for the future.