Langston University students are voicing their concerns about unresolved housing problems, including plumbing issues, key accessibility, and maintenance delays. Many students have filed maintenance requests that have either taken weeks to resolve or have gone completely unanswered.
Rayven Thurman, a graduating senior who lives in the Scholars Inn Apartments at Langston University, is one of them. “I was originally living in [building] 15 but we had plumbing issues, and I had to move in the middle of the semester … they only gave us like five days to move, so we had to move all of that in a short amount of time.”
Thurman also described how maintenance responded to the matter. “Maintenance came, they took the toilet out, and they took the ground up and everything … I thought they were going to do something? Never did. Left the toilet out, and never came back in.”
Students living in Scholars Inn Apartments and Langston Commons Apartments share similar concerns about delayed maintenance response times and communication breakdowns.
Gabriel Lane, a junior who also lives in the Scholars Inn Apartments spoke about his experience. “Thankfully, I am a part of the track team, and I do get my rooms rented out before anybody else. But that doesn’t excuse the fact that sometimes the rooms are messy when I get there, or something’s broken, like the AC or the water or the showers.” He explained that residential assistants could be more effective by being more attentive. “It just takes them a long time to reply if there is an issue.”
Key accessibility has remained a recurring issue on campus. Students are sometimes not issued keys to their building, or are not issued new keys when a former key is lost. Thurman said, “I feel like there shouldn’t be any problems when it comes to keys, like why do we not have proper keys to the housing?”
Uri Butler, a second-year residential assistant (RA) of the Langston Commons Apartments, said, “Once you get into that department, you see a lot of things, you hear a lot things … there were some processes that we came across as a department that were a bit archaic, you know, a bit behind time.”
Butler added, “My old supervisors gave me the task of organizing the keys to find a way, so they won’t be getting lost. I came up with a system of tracking down the keys, color coding it, and it’s one of the systems that we use within our department.”
He says that this system has been used from the Fall 2024 check-outs to the Spring 2025 check-ins. No keys have been lost between either of those processes. Butler said, “The current associative housing wants to implement that throughout the whole department.”
Despite the ongoing concerns, some students say they’re less surprised by the issues and more frustrated by what feels like a lack of transparency and urgency.
“They do be taking money from us,” Thurman said. “Where’s this money going to? I’m not seeing it pour into Langston in the ways that we actually need it.”
For many, it’s not just about broken keys, plumbing issues, or maintenance delays, it’s about the bigger picture: how Langston University resources are being used and whether student needs are truly being prioritized.
Kaycie Washington
Kaycie Washington is a junior broadcast journalism major.
