As of today, at least 40 students are left without assigned housing for the 2025-2026 academic year. However, this is not the first time Wellesley’s residential life has dropped the ball on housing placement.
In 2019, many students were left without housing, and some students were forced to be housed in basement study spaces that were later converted into dorm rooms. The 2019 housing debacle spawned a larger conversation about housing issues and the need for renovations in dorm halls, which could have been a factor in the college’s decision to create the long-term dorm renovation plan underway today. However, despite improvements to residential life, issues like this week’s housing shortage continue to highlight the major ways in which housing at Wellesley is not built for students.
We have seen Wellesley making major strides in developing our crumbling dorm infrastructure, and students applauded the renovations to Tower Court. However, while the college now works to improve its infrastructure, it fails to support students living in its housing.
The administrative staff in residential life at Wellesley has long operated as a business rather than supporting students. Financially independent students at Wellesley, whose permanent address is the College, were previously given housing through winter and summer breaks. Those students, otherwise homeless during breaks, were told abruptly in 2024 that they would no longer be eligible for summer housing. Despite independent students being charged the full cost of summer housing and buildings having vacant spaces, the policy has not been reversed explicitly. These students consider Wellesley their full-time home while attending, but have been thrown to the curb by residential life. Even student deans, who know the depths of students’ personal lives, have been unable to persuade residential life to make exceptions.
In the past, all students could request summer and winter housing due to extenuating circumstances. “Gap housing” used to allow students to stay in their summer housing after their summer classes ended, sometimes because of an unsafe or unstable home environment or other unfortunate circumstances. Now, Residential Life no longer accommodates exceptions to their summer housing terms and they do not explicitly offer break or gap housing to students with extenuating circumstances. When I have attempted to request exceptions to the housing rules, I often received rude, dismissive and passive-aggressive emails from the residential life team, and few students have been granted exemptions to the new rules.
Students who do get the opportunity to stay in summer housing often end up regretting it. While AC in the past has been seen as an unnecessary luxury, global warming has made summers in Massachusetts more extreme. Intense heat waves raised the temperature in my summer dorm room to over 90 degrees for multiple days straight. This caused both my elderly cat and me to experience symptoms of heat stroke and dehydration. The only solution given by residential life was to sleep in common spaces, which often do not have enough space to house all students and also would not allow my cat. Despite the likelihood of temperatures and heat waves getting even worse over the next few decades due to climate change, the college has not added air conditioning to any of its dorm remodeling projects.
It doesn’t end at misplaced, overheated and unhoused students who suffer from residential life decisions. Graduating seniors like me have to move out by 5 pm the day of graduation, while past seniors had more time to move out of their rooms. After four years of hard work, seniors deserve to have at least more time to spend with their families and celebrate their graduation before rushing to pack or get on a plane just hours after they walk the stage. One day is not a huge ask, and Residential Life’s ridiculous timeline is lacking empathy or recognition of graduates’ feelings.
Many treasured social dorms and student spaces are left nowhere to be found after remodeling. The Tower Court apartments–a go-to place for students to relax, host events, and loosen up– have been turned into residential offices and non-private community spaces. While blocks used to allow students to build their own private communities on campus, the new block design is often strategically found in the middle of a large hallway or placed around a room with a Residential Assistant or a House President. This change chipped away at “small student-centered communities,” like single-only Beebe 5th-floor upperclassmen, to host private gatherings. Not to mention, themed and group housing such as the substance-free and Walenisi, which used to be on designated dorm floors to provide a safe space for students, were first reduced to smaller blocks or pods, and then disbanded entirely. Not only does this especially damage the ability of Black and POC students to live in communities that make them feel more comfortable, but it also directly goes against students’ needs and wants, promoting a less social and comfortable housing environment.
What happened to the 40 unhoused students this week said it clearly, the college does not only have a shortage of singles, but of rooms as a whole. The availability of dorms, or the lack of it, has always been a developing issue. In the past, juniors, not only seniors, were guaranteed singles as well. Even though our enrollment has stayed relatively consistent over the last decade, only some lucky juniors can get a single and even a handful of seniors have stories of being forced into doubles despite a policy guaranteeing a single.
Dower Hall, a small dorm known for spacious rooms and suites that housed up to 40 students, has still not reopened nor been scheduled for remodels. Additionally, Wellesley has subsidized off-campus housing that is offered primarily to faculty. However, this housing has tons of vacancies and is rarely ever fully utilized. Despite this, the college does not offer students the opportunity to rent out of this subsidized housing. Residential life instead operates on a very tight room constraint with almost no vacant rooms, which is an incredibly callous and risky move that leaves students experiencing major room issues, Title IX violations, or roommate problems with little to no opportunity to move.
Quite frankly, Wellesley does not have enough rooms for its students to operate safely and comfortably. Despite this, it refuses to reopen Dower Hall, subsidize off-campus housing for students, or build new dorm living. It also continues to disrespect its students: dismantling our communities, leaving us with no dorm assignment, kicking out our homeless sibs from dorms, and forcing us to go directly from graduation to a flight across the country. In 2019, students and alumni took the housing crisis as an opportunity to call upon the college to make major changes to the dorms. As another housing crisis is happening, I implore us to call upon residential life itself to change, and lead with empathy and respect for students. Wellesley housing holds our lives, our communities, our Wellesley families and it deserves to be treated as more than a transaction.
