Wright State University has seen a record-breaking increase of students starting for the 2025 school year. but with this increase in students comes new problems. From moving in to parking, these problems will pose new potential challenges for living on-campus.
Population increase
WSU has had an amazing growth of students within the last year. Currently, WSU is sitting at about 11,000 students attending across both the Dayton and Lake campuses. Over 10,000 of the students alone go to the Dayton campus.
While this is really great for the school, so far this is post a few issues for students that they wish to address. One of these being move-in.
Operation: Move In
This year was record-breaking for on-campus housing, with over 2,400 people attending Operation Move In! At the moment, this is the highest number of people who have ever lived on-campus at one time. Jen Attenweiler, Director of Residence Life and Housing, made a statement on this exciting number.
“This is the most residential students we’ve had living on campus in over 10 years. We're excited to see such strong interest in campus living, which supports student engagement and success,” Attenweiler said.
This year was slightly different to previous years, as housing decided to have students move in all in the same day, rather than splitting it up like they normally do. This ended up causing long wait times for students trying to pick up their keys.
“We waited for three hours to get my keys,” said a student who asked to remain anonymous. "From what I was told by a few friends, they were trying something new with move-in this year, but it kind of ended up not working at all. Once I actually got to the Woods, it was quick with getting things unloaded, but that three hour wait in the blistering heat wasn’t a good way to start the year.
All of these students attending WSU means that there are more cars on campus, which has ultimately led to worsening parking issues.
Parking
Parking on-campus has always been one of the primary struggles for WSU students, and it has been the topic of discussion and debate for years. There are so many new cars on campus, which exacerbates this issue further; English major Willow Hayes discussed this.
“It was hard to find parking last year, but this is insane. I leave for my classes fairly early because I know that parking is nuts. But it still takes me literally a half hour to find a spot. Today I said ‘screw it’ and parked in Lot 4. Then I had to walk another 10 minutes to Allyn,” Hayes said.
Hayes feels like there are solutions that can be made to fix this problem.
“I feel like they need to just build a parking structure or something. This isn’t even a new issue for [WSU],” Hayes stated. “I’m happy we have numbers, considering where we’ve been in the past, but they need to keep up with the infrastructure of the campus if they are going to recruit how they are, especially if it barely is able to accommodate the students they already have."
There is to be expected growing pains when more people enter a space, but it is still up in the air as to whether or not these pains will be met with a response or not.
