With the semester ending and many students out of a place to live thanks to the university’s decision to deny housing to upperclassmen, we should take time out to think about Steve Sanzak.
Sanzak, a sophomore at New York University, spent the past eight months living in a library sub-basement. Unable to afford university housing and with no viable options, he spent the school year sleeping on library chairs and desks.
Temple University is not NYU, nor is Philadelphia another New York. But there is a housing crunch here for students who wish to live on-campus and no plans have been announced to build more housing.
It is a recipe for disaster.
Aggressive recruitment drives are bringing in record freshman classes and in the process raising questions about student demographics. In the meantime, it is clear the university is accepting more students then it can handle. Temple students are on the street and in need of housing the university isn’t able to offer, just like Sanzak.
By consistently accepting more and more students and not keeping up by adding the necessary housing space, Temple is heading down a disastrous path. The Strawbridge space students will be housed in starting this fall is certainly not enough.
New dormitories need to be built on campus. It is that simple. By dodging the issue, Temple is only hurting itself in the end. Students are aware of this and more than a thousand students who have to find off-campus housing found out the hard way. If new student housing is not built, we might all end up like Steve Sanzak.
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