OPINION: Campus Housing Problems, from the Parent Perspective

Facing campus housing issues doesn’t only affect students; it affects the parents too.  

Parents know about the problems their students deal with in housing, issues like broken front doors, broken ceiling fans, faulty shower heads, or bad outlets. The three big main problems dealt with regularly are are mold growth, missing door keys and apartment flooding. I personally have dealt with all three during my current junior semester.

Trina Goff, my mother, saw a lizard come out from the sink when I experienced flooding, and she heard about me having to go through moving without any assistance while being sick.

Goff said, “The students are frustrated, you know, it throws them off their studies. I do believe if your living conditions are not right you can’t focus on school.” Parents like Goff have even tried helping their babies by calling the president’s office, sending emails and coming to the school.

When students don’t have a key to their rooms, parents start to get concerned.   With doors unlocked, students at risk, making them vulnerable to any potential danger. When my roommate received no key after we moved from our flooded apartment, we had to keep the door cracked for almost a month, until she received a new key. This led to three unknown boys coming into my apartment, looking in the fridge and running out when I noticed them. Goff said, “I called the president. I got all my emails, I said I’m withdrawing her because my daughter is unsafe.” To try to fix this problem, housing provides on-call Residents Assistants (RAs) to unlock apartment doors when someone loses their key or simply wasn’t issued a key. 

Jeannette Moore, another parent, feels that housing workers take their time when addressing problems and should be more attentive. Parents feel that their child should never have to go a month without a key or dealing with a broken toilet after putting in a complaint. They also want the student workers to be more professional while on the phone and in-person. Parents feel that if their child has to experience these problems they should be compensated. There have been reports that some students are compensated when emergencies happen, but the process to get compensation is not clear and not all students receive it. 

The water supply has been a problem for years but has been better this semester. Parents still encourage their children not to drink, cook with, wash their face with or even wash their hair in on-campus water. Instead, they advise their children to use water bottles.

Parents recommend that students try to know what to expect when dealing with housing problems. Do your research, they say, also keeping in mind that the school is very old and the buildings are likely to have problems. If you were to run into any housing issues, make sure you’re ready to buckle down on the university to make sure they’re getting things done in a quick manner. The university has hundreds of students dealing with the same problems you may be dealing with so just stay on top of handling the situation and remind the staff members. Even though you might run into problems, they will get addressed in a matter of time. 

There are pros and cons within the housing community at Langston University. Parents do understand the pressure of working with so many students and appreciate the things housing has done for some students that haven’t really gotten recognized, like providing engagement opportunities, helping with stolen items, keeping students updated on clubhouse events, sometimes providing cleaning products when moving, and helping take out trash when they can. 

Ultimately, parents want the housing staff to be more involved in comforting students while in distress. Parents say that if there’s flooding, housing should provide moving assistance for students who need help moving. As Krystal Harper, another mom of a Langston student, says, “housing problems should be the last thing on students’ minds when focusing on studies.”