Students raise concerns about changes to summer housing as they fear the options will compound existing problems they face when living on-campus for the summer. The Residence Life webpage lists Kildahl Hall and Mohn Hall as available housing options for students living on campus for the summer. In previous summers, Kildahl and Rand Hall were the options for summer housing. The change has sparked concern among students, who worry about the health, safety, and logistics of the hundreds of students planning to live on campus this summer. These concerns and a lack of transparency led students to create a petition to the College’s administration to show student support for better summer housing.
Several hundred students remain on campus for summer housing each year. Students remaining on campus fall into two categories with significant overlap: students working on campus and international students. Many students on campus are researchers for various Collaborative Undergraduate Research and Inquiry (CURI) projects or the Weber Scholars program. Other student workers work for various campus offices with summer programming.
“Most of the time, people who stay here are international students who cannot afford to go home,” said an anonymous student involved with creating the petition. The source chose to remain anonymous due to concerns about their position living on campus this summer as an international student and CURI researcher.
The anonymous student found out that Mohn would be one of the Residence Halls for summer housing from their friends.
“I accepted a CURI position for the summer of 2024 … Most of us didn’t have information. We’re all just … trying to get anything that’s not Mohn. Anything that is livable,” the anonymous student said.
A major concern about summer housing changes is the crowded kitchens’ fire hazards. Kildahl and Mohn each have one kitchen, decreasing the number of kitchens available to summer residents by half, going from four last summer to two this year.
Due to the number of students who cook rather than go for the meal plan during the summer, students are concerned about the increase in cooking fires that may come from hundreds of people sharing just two kitchens.
“Nobody is going to pay $1,000 for Stav meals on campus because one, the timings of Stav don’t work with everyone’s schedules and two, it’s not worth $1,000,” the anonymous student said. “Maybe it’s them trying to get us to pay more. I don’t know.”
“At the end of the day, it is a cause for concern because multiple kitchens help to prevent fire hazards, especially when you have more than 100 people who need to cook,” the anonymous student continued. “The kitchen space is not going to be enough. They would need a fire truck parked outside.”
Mariana Rogan ’24 worked on campus last summer as a Summer Community Assistant (SCA), a Residence Life staff position with similar responsibilities to a Residential Assistant (RA). They told The Olaf Messenger they were already having problems due to a lack of kitchen space during their time as an SCA.
“There were frequently times when at least one of the kitchens in Rand was also left too gross to use. If that were the case when there are only two kitchens available to all of the residents that are on campus over the summer, then that severely limits the options,” Rogan said. “I think there was one point where the stove and oven in the Kildahl kitchen were broken and we filed a maintenance report but it didn’t get fixed for quite a long time, maybe a week or more.”
Rogan raised the concern that conditions for summer residential staff may be more dangerous for this year’s staff. “Mohn is a tower dorm, so there are way more floors to cover, especially with that not being an air-conditioned dorm. Doing the rounds in Rand was kind of like a respite from the warmer Kildahl rounds,” Rogan said.
The other primary concern from students is the lack of air cooling systems in Kildahl and Mohn. Minnesota’s summer months can stay above 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius) for multiple days at a time. Without air cooling, heat inside buildings can be dangerous to residents. The anonymous student is concerned about how this might intensify in ten-story Mohn. While other buildings may be open during the day, that doesn’t replace air cooling inside residence halls.
“One of the issues I had while working was heat and air conditioning when I was on duty. I had to get up every two hours to do rounds and walk around both dorm buildings,” Rogan said. “It got to be very exhausting and difficult to do in the summer heat, especially when there was no air conditioning in Kildahl.”
Alongside the above issues, a general lack of transparency and concern about the cost of summer housing and poor living conditions worries students. In previous years, students could choose between living in Kildahl and guaranteeing a single room without air-conditioning or an air-conditioned double room in Rand. Costs differed based on selection. The new payment also confuses students who now must pay extra for staying on campus outside of the summer class sessions, needing to pay multiple times rather than once for an entire summer of housing.
These issues led students to petition to increase the likelihood of conversing with administrators to address these logistical connections and safety issues.
Students created the petition after discussing options with International Senator Omar Fitian ’26 and Associate Director of International Student Programs Brisa Zubia.
“We realized that a petition is a good answer because it shows them numbers, and usually they say, ‘Oh, we need numbers,’” the anonymous student said.
Once they became aware of the changes to summer housing, they became part of organizing a response to the Residence Life Office and administration.
The petition asks that students across the St. Olaf community will take this issue seriously.
“If you’re not advocating for your community, we aren’t showing them it matters to us,” the source said. “Support your friends who are staying over the summer. We rely on our non-international students.”
Those interested in learning more about the topic can contact International Senator Fitian or read the petition: https://forms.gle/hrnFSh4eTs2soZwFA.
