NEWS
NO VACANCIES THE TUFTS HOUSING CRISIS CONTINUED
By Aden Malone
O
f the 150,000 students completing their higher education in the Boston area, nearly half of them were living in privately-owned, off-campus housing as of Boston’s 2020 Student Housing Report. Tufts hasn’t built a new on-campus residence since the 2006 construction of Sophia Gordon Hall, even though they are in the middle of a plan to increase the student population to 6,600 undergraduates by 2026, in contrast with a 5,483 undergraduate student population in 2018. In response to Tufts’ growing student population, administration announced via email on April 8, 2022 they plan to build new modular housing for incoming freshmen and a new dormitory building by 2026. With recent developments such as the Joyce Cummings Center and the Medford/Tufts Green Line extension, Tufts 16 TUFTS OBSERVER MAY 2, 2022
is navigating their campus projects amidst local regulations and an urgent need for high-density housing. Over-enrollment has been a difficult problem for Tufts and its peer institutions to tackle. “Predicting yield is always a difficult task, and the pandemic has certainly made that more challenging,” said JT Duck, Tufts’ Dean of Undergraduate Admissions. “When coupled with a new test-optional policy, significantly reduced campus visits, and potential changes to applicant decision-making during this period of uncertainty, there are far more unknowns than ever before,” he continued. To combat their underestimations in the last couple of years, the admissions office has reduced the number of admitted students for the Class of 2026. Still, 100 first-year students lived in the Hyatt Place
hotel in Medford this year, and, according to a recent email from Camille Lizarríbar, Tufts’ Dean of Student Affairs, 150 incoming first-years are now scheduled to live in temporary housing modules located at the site of the current COVID modular housing. There have been a variety of reactions to this new plan, ranging from outrage to neutrality to acceptance. Jake Pryor, an incoming freshman, explained, “Is it going to be the end of the world if I get a mod? No. Would I prefer to be in regular housing? Yeah for sure.” He continued, “I understand the rationale behind why the school is [housing some first-years in modular housing]... bigger class sizes [and] all the COVID mess when it comes to admitting students.”
