Students at North Carolina A&T State University (N.C. A&T) are speaking out against administrators and expressing their on-campus housing concerns.
Students at North Carolina A&T are protesting today due to the lack of housing. One student tells me she doesn’t have housing for next year and she may have kiss her college dreams good bye.
— Michaela Leggett (@Michaelatv_) May 2, 2022
#ncat @ncathousing @NCATAdmissions pic.twitter.com/3SMan4VL20
The situation unfolded in a protest held outside of Holland Hall, a dorm, on Monday.
Many of the protestors were concerned over their housing situation for the upcoming school year, as many people’s 2021-2022 leases are coming to an end. They also felt as though the Greensboro-based HBCU was incapable of guaranteeing on-campus housing for anyone other than incoming freshmen.
“Admissions is admitting too many students, securing housing for incoming students coming and not the current [students] who are already here that need housing,” Haleigh Aldrige, a sophomore at N.C. A&T and the organizer of the protest said.
“I’m a current student who needs housing. I don’t know what I’m going to do for the next semester. For off-campus housing, it’s too expensive for a lot of people,” she continued.
In response to the students’ concerns, N.C. A&T issued a statement.
“North Carolina A&T State University is working toward housing a great many Aggies for the 2022-23 school year, as we and campuses across the country do every year,” school officials wrote.
“What sets A&T apart from those universities, however, is that we house a significantly higher percentage of our undergraduate students than our peers – 48.5% in the current school year. Other campuses average about 25% a year, according to data provided by campus housing professionals nationwide,” the statement continued.
University officials have offered emergency grants for students who need to secure off-campus housing, though it doesn’t appear as though the institution is planning on increasing its current number of dormitories.
Presently, N.C. A&T has 15 on-campus dorms. Additionally, the school owns 5 nearby apartment complexes for affiliate housing.
These N.C. A&T housing protests came about six months following the Blackburn Takeover at Howard University.
As Blavity previously reported, students at the Washington, D.C., HBCU held a 33-day-long protest in the university’s Blackburn Center. The matter was related to students’ concerns over the school’s housing conditions, and the protest lasted from Oct. 12 to Nov. 15.
