Purdue reverses last-minute swaps of student leases

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. ― Purdue University junior Derrick Arndt went home to Atlanta for the summer confident of moving into his new apartment at Benchmark III in August. But Purdue University Residences upended Arndt's plans.

“Benchmark III is what I signed up for in November," Arndt said. "I believe they said the housing arrangements would not change.”

But his did change.

“It was shocking," he said. "It also was very disheartening. I signed that lease all the way back in November. I assumed it was locked in.”

An email Wednesday from Purdue University Residences to hundreds of Purdue students, including Arndt, informed them that their housing leases signed in November were being unilaterally changed because the university has 1,600 more incoming students than it anticipated.

The good news is that student backlash forced Purdue to reverse course, sending out a second email about 2 p.m. Thursday. Thursday's email doesn't address how it will house the additional 1,600 incoming Purdue students expected to arrive next month.

"Housing notifications from yesterday (July 10) were not what many of you had expected," Thursday's email states. "We have heard your concerns and are working diligently to find a solution that will best serve both our returning students and our incoming class of first-year students."

Purdue spokesman Trevor Peters said late Thursday, "Purdue issued housing notices on July 10 to returning students. Of the 7,442 upperclass students who chose to live in University Residences, just over 700 received room assignments that were different than what they expected.

"The university has been working through solutions for those students and this afternoon offered the following options: 1. Keep your original housing contract. This is the default. You don't need to do anything to keep it. 2. Completely voluntarily as your choice, if you choose (you don’t have to) the alternative given to you on July 10, then your annual room fee will be reduced by $4,000 in addition to any automatic change due to occupancy. (Example for First Street Towers double occupancy: $5,800 - $4,000 = $1,800 a year.) 3. You may also choose to be released from your contract without penalty.

"Those who don’t explicitly choose an option by 5 p.m. EST Sunday, July 14, will default to option 1: keeping the original plan from last November/December."

The news stunned many.

“We’re very surprised about the reversal," Arndt said, "but we’re also kind of little distrustful of university housing. I don’t know how they’re going to manage what they said they’ll do. I’m glad they’re noticing all the backlash."

Purdue students' 24 hours of anger over housing changes

In November, Arndt and his three roommates signed a lease to live in a two-room apartment in Benchmark III for $950 per person. The apartments are at the south end of Grant Street within walking and biking distances to campus. Being near campus means they won't have to own a car, pay car insurance or buy gasoline, Arndt said.

Wednesday's email informed Arndt and his roommates that they were being relocated to Wabash Lofts in the northwest corner of the city. Walking to campus was out. So was biking. The unilateral reassignment of housing accommodations meant they'd have to buy cars, which is cost-prohibitive, Arndt said.

“I definitely would like to keep my current housing right now," Arndt said during a Thursday afternoon phone interview with the Journal & Courier. "I’m not sure any of the benefits that they would be willing to throw in would be worth the extra commute of car, insurance and gas.”

“The idea that you can just move people from places where transportation is literally just walking or biking to places where you have to drive or you have to rely on the bus service … is kind of reprehensible,” he said. “It’s been very stressful the last day-and-a-half."

Purdue president reacts

By Thursday morning, the internet was filled with seething Purdue students and parents about the unilateral changes, and Purdue President Mung Chiang responded on LinkedIn, a social media site for professionals.

Initially, Purdue expected to accept fewer incoming students for the 2024 school year to avoid overcapacity challenges experienced in the last few years, Chiang said.

"The university continues to work through housing assignments for first-year students, working on master leases for additional local apartments, and we expect to issue those assignments within the coming week," Peters wrote. "Although we targeted smaller enrollment and admitted fewer percentage of undergraduate applicants for fall 2024 than ever, during the crucial late April and May decision-making period this spring, students voted with their feet to Purdue, accepting their offers of admission at historically unprecedented levels, resulting in more students than ever before requesting housing in university residences."

After April 25 pro-Palestinian protests and arrests at other campuses, including Indiana University, Purdue received a flood of students accepting offers here, Chiang said in his statement.

Influx of new students comes after protestors arrested at IU

At IU, police officers in riot gear arrested 55 protestors on campus between April 25 and April 27, and photos appeared of officers on building roofs holding rifles. In contrast, protests on Purdue's campus did not result in any arrests and did not draw a large police presence.

“Then suddenly in the following two weeks, about 1,600 additional, beyond all historical ‘yield rate’ expectation, high school seniors and their families leaning toward other universities in Indiana and in other states pivoted to accept Purdue’s admission instead, based on the different campus conditions they saw,” Chiang said in his Thursday post.

The influx caused the fall 2024 yield rate above 31%, instead of the lower rate university officials planned for, Chiang wrote.

New dorms planned to open next year, coupled with lower admission rates, should avoid this problem in fall 2025, Chiang said, pledging that the university is working to find the best housing solutions for the fall 2024.

'Every year the housing crisis gets worse'

“It seems like this is a perpetual problem where they do this every year," Arndt said, "and then they apologize for it, and then they don’t change any of their actions. Every year the housing crisis gets worse.

“Purdue really needs to address this problem," Arndt said. "If it happened once, that would be understandable. But it happens four times on four different years, clearly you have a systematic issue that needs to be addressed.”

Arndt's experience of Purdue housing has him questioning his decision to be a Boilermaker. He certainly would not recommend the university to his friends, and if they insisted on attending classes here, he would advise them to live off campus.

When it comes to where he might live his senior year, it's off campus, he said.

“Clearly they’re not focused on addressing the issues," Arndt said. "I doubt it’s going to be any better next year unless some serious changes happen. I just don’t trust them anymore.”

Reach Ron Wilkins at rwilkins@jconline.com. Follow on Twitter: @RonWilkins2. Jillian Ellison is a reporter for the Journal and Courier. She can be reached via email at jellison@gannett.com. Follow her on X at @ellison_writes.

This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: Purdue University reverses its unilateral changes of students' leases