Outside my apartment doors, you can almost still smell the dew on the grass from the lovely little field that dump trucks dusted years of dirt over so suddenly. Yes, another construction zone. Hillcrest and Country Place Townhouses is expanding with another complex right on the corner of 48th Avenue and Pierce Street. Evolve Student Living recently had a grand opening and campus housing is being built as well.

In the past, it has been a scramble to find housing on and off campus at Grand Valley State University. Everything fills up quickly after the fall. Will this help the students who are forced to commute or live in an otherwise ideal situation such as being downtown with all Allendale classes? Or, will this further contribute to the overpopulating of the student body?

GVSU has grown significantly since it’s meager beginnings with a class shy of 200 in the 1960s. We now educate over 25,000 students. More and more students are being accepted every year. Construction has been done to both accommodate these students as well as expand educational opportunities.

The university has managed to maintain this big student body while still having small class sizes. Students can still get individual focus. They have the opportunity to ask questions. It is possible to meet with professors. Will this still be feasible if the student body continues to increase?

Currently, freshmen are struggling to find housing on campus. Some dormitories have converted their lobbies into living areas. A few freshmen have had to live downtown or stay at home if that is an option for them.

Now, this is all fine and dandy if you have a car, but if you don’t, this is an extreme hassle. The awful truth is that even if you do have a car, the parking situation is horrendous. There’s simply not enough room. Even with the high cost on parking passes, which should be limiting how many students park on campus, it can take 20 minutes to find a spot to park on a weekday. It’s not just students having this issue, I’ve heard faculty address it as well. It’s the midday crunch time. All the food venues are packed. The Little Mac Bridge has a traffic jam. Our campus can get pretty full at times.

Even so, we have a balance going, but if the school continues to accept more and more students, this new housing will fill up just as quickly and we’ll be stuck in a worse situation.

Requirements need to be more difficult to get accepted. There needs to be some kind of cap. How can GVSU continue to give such great one-on-one attention with peer tutors, office hours, academic counselors or any of our academic resources if we have this huge pileup of students? Endless expansion is not always the right option.

Can’t we enhance the present educational community instead of trying to become some business? This is a school. Let’s focus on “the enrichment of society through excellent teaching, active scholarship and public service.”