Around March or April every year, college students around the nation prepare to choose their roommates and living situation. For those of you who go to a small college, this time of year can be an absolute nightmare. Capital University students have a very particular set of strenuous hoops to jump through in order to gain housing off campus. Here at Capital, housing is separated into what is called, "The Neighborhood," and dorm housing. “The Neighborhood” is classified as the Capital-owned houses on Sheridan Avenue and their two apartment complexes, Capital Commons and Capital University Apartments.

For most colleges, your junior and senior years are spent in houses or apartments. For Capital University students, these opportunities are few and far between. The issue lies with the amount of available housing in the neighborhood. In total, there are anywhere between 300-400 available spaces for living in accommodations that are not dorms. This year’s upcoming senior class has approximately 600 students, with a quarter of them being commuters. If you do the math, that leaves barely enough opportunities for all of the senior class to live in apartments or houses. There are students who will choose to live in off-campus housing, but this still does not leave appropriate opportunities.

At most campuses, upperclassmen do not have to worry about living in dorms. Capital University is not one of these campuses. While seniors do get to choose housing a day before juniors, the problem is exacerbated when special accommodations are allocated. What I mean when I say special accommodations is that you have a validated reason for not being able to live in a dorm and you have a doctor’s excuse for the said reason. It is at this point that upperclassmen begin to get screwed. With the growing classes, there are fewer and fewer places to put the increasing population. This means that people have resorted to finding minuscule reasons, such as needing a safe place to meditate, for why they need to have an apartment or house. The Capital University student body has begun to sell their souls to the devil in order to not live in a grungy old dorm room during their final years in college.

It is very apparent that people on campus become more stressed out during the housing process than they are during finals week. This is a very serious problem. There have been many instances where disgruntled seniors have been seen crying as they leave from the housing lottery in dismay. The main issue with the housing process is a growing population, a lack of off-campus housing opportunities and faulty special accommodations.

For someone who has followed the rules every year of their residence on campus at Capital University, this is a very frustrating time. Ones’ senior year will not be the same if you are forced to live within the confines of a dirty dorm. Capital University has long been criticized for these issues, but fail to make any changes to the process that are meaningful. Until then, the student body is torn apart by having to make decisions that normally would not be made in order to have suitable living arrangements. The Capital University housing crisis is a pressing issue that continues to be put on the back burner. Until something is done about this problem, Capital students will be forced to compromise moral standards and lose friends in the process.