EDITORIAL: Seniors We're Not Gone Yet

Belmont Vision Multimedia, Braden Simmons

Belmont doesn’t seem to care about its seniors as much as its other students.  

Belmont administration announced Thursday that seniors will not be guaranteed housing next semester. 

It came as a disappointment to many rising seniors, who see this as another added stressor going into the end of their college experience. 

Belmont will push many rising seniors “out the nest,” but many will likely not have the nest egg to pay for it.  

Last semester, Belmont offered off-campus housing on a first-come, first-served basis, and students had been told the university was seeking additional housing for them. It’s even building a new dorm - Caldwell II - to aid this problem.  

But it won’t open until the fall of 2025. 

This doesn’t help seniors now. 

Instead of the typical housing protocol, seniors will have to cross their fingers and wait to see if they literally win the draw of a lottery.  

Lottery losers will be forced to find housing off-campus in an extremely competitive market in a very popular city. 

Where will they go? 

A scarce few will revert to living with their parents. But most students are not from these parts. 

As Belmont noted on its website in 2021, this rising senior class of Bruins hail “from 49 different states and nine foreign countries” and “come to campus well-qualified for the next phase of their academic journey.” 

Seniors may have been well-qualified, but are they well equiped to navigate a housing market with an average cost of rent at $2,165 a month, according to WKRN. 

And for those that are from the surrounding area it begs the question: will they really learn independence with their parents right down the hall? 

Belmont has essentially put increasing enrollment ahead of having the actual capacity to house  the students. And the seniors are taking the hit. 

This certainly shouldn’t have been the solution to the problem.  

While this problem is certainly complex, its largely self-inflicted which makes it that much more disappointing. 

Belmont should have limited its freshman classes before attempting to course correct and before it had the infrastructure in place to handle the housing needs. 

It feels like they scrambled to find a solution and just decided on the easiest one. 

Belmont has seemingly given up on its seniors. 

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This article was written by Braden Simmons