‘They need to do better’: Parents frustrated over University of Utah dorm chaos

Editor’s note: As of Thursday afternoon, the waitlist for campus housing was trimmed down to 22 students.

The University of Utah had guaranteed Anna Smith that her son would have a dorm room when they filled out the application in May. But now, with the first day of school less than two weeks away, his name is still on a waitlist — and she is afraid the promise won’t be kept.

The family lives hundreds of miles away in Montana, which limits their options. Smith said she doesn’t know if she should book a hotel room here for her son, bring a tent or cross her fingers.

“It’s just been a nightmare,” she said.

Currently, the U.’s housing staff is telling her that it’s possible her son — a freshman — won’t be assigned a room until the same day the semester starts, on Aug. 19. Smith said they have advised her to drive down that day with the hope they will be able to find a place for him.

“At this point, my guarantee is if I come to Utah without a housing assignment, that he’ll likely have one,” she said. “How do I even plan for that? How is he supposed to get moved in that day and also to his classes on time? And what if there isn’t a room available?”

Smith isn’t the only parent stuck in the uncertainty caused by the U.’s messy freshman housing rollout this year. And it’s not the first time it’s happened either.

It’s part of a pattern of chaos repeated the last few years at the flagship school over dorm assignments. But it seems to have gotten worse this fall with the shortage of rooms butting so close to the start of the semester.

And it comes at the same time as the U. has been pushing for more and more first-year students to live on campus.

Moms and dads from across the country have been commenting in a University of Utah parents group on Facebook, stressing that their kids are similarly without a housing assignment after they were also promised a room. Many have said they’ve canceled plane tickets because of the situation, not knowing now when they’ll need to be there to help their kid move in. Some have been questioning if they should even come to the university at all.

“Maybe we should’ve just gone with UNR” — the University of Nevada, Reno — said parent Sonia Petkewich, who lives in Las Vegas and whose son is attending the U. this fall.

The school’s spokesperson for campus housing, Ana Belmonte, estimated Monday that roughly 100 freshmen remain on the waitlist as of this week. By Thursday afternoon, that was whittled down to 22.

“I understand for parents, if you are out of state, this could be stressful,” she said. “We’re working super hard” to get it resolved.

Belmonte acknowledged — as did another round of emails sent out to the students still waiting Monday — that the U. did guarantee housing for those who applied by June 5. It is the first time the U. has ever made that pledge. And, she said, the school intends to fulfill it.

In past years, some students have been put up in the university’s Guest House, but that will not happen this year. Some rooms with two beds, though, are being shifted to triple suites to accomodate more students, some parents noted on Facebook. The school is also considering other unspecified “temporary solutions.”

A look at the numbers

University President Taylor Randall made increasing the number of dorm rooms his goal when he was inaugurated in 2022, with plans for 11,000 students in residence halls by 2027. And he has been consistently pushing living on campus as part of a better college experience.

“We want to dispel the notion that the university is a commuter campus,” he said at the time.

But a message from the president from October, where he first posted about guaranteed on-campus housing for this year’s incoming freshman class of 2028, remains online with only the title — and no text below it.

Parents are worried the school overpromised. An initial look at the numbers suggests the U. didn’t anticipate how many would be interested in the offer.

Even with the new Impact & Prosperity Epicenter dorms opening this fall, the amount of beds available on campus currently sits at 5,500, Belmonte said, as several new dorm buildings are still in the works and not yet online. Of those available beds, 3,700 are set aside for freshmen.

The problem: 4,400 applied. That’s 700 more applications than beds.

“The math is not mathing,” said Petkewich, who is worried the school doesn’t have options to make up the difference.

Not all of those who applied met the deadline, though, Belmonte said, and many have since made other plans and withdrawn their applications. Rooms are being filled as soon as they become available.

But even those who applied by the earlier May 3 priority deadline were not all housed yet, she acknowledged, by Monday.

“We are super close to getting them assigned housing,” she said, noting that another 60 notices went out this week to students getting a room on Monday and then another round on Wednesday.

As for those who applied by the June 5 deadline — which is still supposed to be part of the guarantee — “we are working on it,” she added.

The promise, Belmonte said, is for housing on campus. While students could select their top building choices in the application — based on price, location or how many students share a room — none of that is part of the pledge by the U., which is only that a student is guaranteed a bed somewhere on campus, she noted.

Several parents are frustrated by that, saying they finally get a room only to find out it’s in the most expensive building and they can’t afford it. The room rate on campus can go as high as $12,800 per academic year, not including the price of a meal plan, for a single pod at one of the newer buildings, Lassonde Studios.

That’s compared to $6,000 per academic year for a triple room in an older building, such as Gateway Heights on upper campus.

“It’s really like they’re just saying, ‘Take it or leave it, and you better be happy about it,’” Petkewich said. “But we don’t have another plan. We don’t have the budget for other things.”

She said they already are paying about $30,000 with out-of-state tuition.

Petkewich tried to raise concerns in June and again last month when she was on campus for orientation. But, she said, she was repeatedly passed off to different housing staff who then didn’t respond to her emails. Her son finally got a housing assignment late Monday, though, after waiting more than two months.

Multiple parents have said the date on the guarantee is what’s been the most frustrating. Several said they were initially told they would have a room by the first move-in date, which is Aug. 13. Then, they say, that got pushed back to the late move-in date on Aug. 17.

Now, most are saying they are told their kid will have a room by the first day of classes. Belmonte said that has been the promise from the start.

How FAFSA problems factored in

Part of what compounded the problem this year, Belmonte said, is issues with the federal financial aid system. Students typically fill out what’s called a FAFSA form to determine how much in grants or stipends they qualify for.

That form was revamped this year, which was supposed to make applying for aid easier. Instead, the form was released months late. Then, it had a major mistake that would have limited how much money students were supposed to qualify for. That had to be repaired in January and caused a further setback.

Universities typically wait to see how much a student gets in federal aid before offering local scholarships and waivers. The delays resulted in schools scrambling to pull financial packages together, including with housing. And it left students and their families unsure for months of how much they were going to need to pay for their education.

The U. typically has its final housing deadline set for May, and it kept an earlier priority deadline then. But because of the FAFSA problems, it pushed the application deadline back to June to accommodate.

That has then created the delays with getting students into dorm rooms, Belmonte said, because the process was months behind where it typically is.

“Nationwide, this is something that every school is experiencing,” she added.

The University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, for instance, has turned to offering $2,000 for students willing to give up their dorm rooms to address the backlog, according to The Chicago Tribune.

In future years, Belmonte said, getting everyone housing should be easier because more rooms should open.

Another email was sent out to students this week about a parking lot next to the new Kahlert Village dorms being closed — because the U. is now starting construction there on another dorm building. The school also recently opened the Ivory University House residence hall, which is operated in a unique partnership with the Clark and Christine Ivory Trust on land donated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

At the same time, though, the school has ended its Home Away from Home Program after a two-year run.

With that, students were housed with alumni living near campus for $5,000 in rent. In the start, the program was housing roughly 100 students, but interest was waning and it was closer to around 25 total when it ended.

Belmonte said canceling that program, though, doesn’t affect the current waitlist. Those who enrolled in the Home Away from Home program were not freshmen.

‘They need to do better’

Meanwhile, Smith is frustrated at the increasing likelihood of needing to move her son in on Aug. 19.

She had wanted her kid to be able to get settled early, get to know his roommates and get a chance to walk around campus. And now, too, there is the possibility that he won’t be housed with other freshmen because he will need to take whatever room is available. That’s what ended up happening with the dorm assignment for Petkewich’s son.

“They need to do better,” she said. “They need to figure it out.”

Smith said it’s not how she wanted it to go for her son’s big move away from home to an out-of-state school.

But now, he keeps getting emails about fun get-to-know-you events happening in the dorms during move-in week that he won’t be able to go to. And they have delayed buying much for his dorm because they don’t know what kind of room he’ll have yet or what he’ll need. He’s just been constantly refreshing his email, hoping for an update.

A message sent to her son Monday acknowledged that. “We understand that not having a specific housing assignment yet,” the school said, “can make it difficult for you to envision your transition to the U.”

It’s left Smith wondering if that transition will even happen — or if they will need to sign him up for online-only classes to take from where he actually has a bed, at home in Montana.