ORANGEBURG, S.C. — This week will be the first week of classes at South Carolina State University, but multiple students say they ran into some problems with their housing assignments.
“I know people who came here from Georgia on Friday, that slept in their car throughout the weekend hoping that on Monday morning they would get housing - just because driving back and forth wasn’t an option," said junior Peyton Blue.
Blue says she, along with more than a dozen other returning students, came to campus Monday with no word on when they'll receive the housing they paid for. Blue received her confirmation receipt securing housing in May.
“Multiple staff members in the housing department told us to come Monday morning and we came 8 o'clock this morning and we were told we have no housing basically, and they told us they don’t know when and if we will have housing at all," she said.
Stelecia Sprinkle is an incoming sophomore who drove up from the Lowcountry for move in day.
“I stay in Charleston, I have a one-year-old so I wasted time Friday coming up there with no answers," Sprinkle said. "They told us that they were gonna have a new list of housing and I sat there for two hours, going on three hours with no answers."
South Carolina State University President Alex Conyers says a record influx of new students, the largest class in 15 years, led to these issues. But the university is working on accommodating the students affected.
“South Carolina State University, just like many universities across the country, this week is experiencing a shortage of housing and for South Carolina State in particularly, we have not had any new dorms built in quite some time. We’ve taken probably six or seven dorms offline so we’re seeing unprecedented growth," said Conyers.
In a statement released Monday, the university says it has enough beds to house all the students who requested housing and rooms are being assigned to students still waiting for placements. A spokesperson for SC State says all students awaiting placements are in the process of being housed and students who had not reported to campus are asked to communicate their intentions as soon as possible.