“Move-in day is the beginning of the next chapter in the lives of these students and their families,” said Dan Bertsos, director of residence life and housing. “The new experiences they have during the coming year will begin to define what’s important to them and how they’ll live their lives as independent adults in a community that is probably more diverse and challenging than they’ve ever seen.”
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Last year, 1,200 freshmen moved into dorms, according to Wright State’s website. Despite 300 fewer freshmen living on campus, university housing will only see a 100-person decline.
“There are more students living on campus than we were expecting,” Baugess said. “That’s being driven by more returning students choosing to live on campus again. It’s the fifth consecutive year that number has gone up, where someone who had a good experience last year chose to live on campus again.”
About 300 student volunteers and 150 faculty, staff and community volunteers, along with 85 golf carts, helped the new students move in, an event referred to as “the day the golf carts take over campus,” Baugess said.
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“I looked at other schools and this is just the one that kind of spoke to me…Just the community type feeling,” said Hannah Patterson of Washington Court House, who was moving in Thursday.
Enrollment projections are the lowest for Wright State University in more than 37 years at 14 percent decrease in total students from last fall.
Wright State is trying to recover from a financial crisis that forced trustees to slash more than $30.8 million from the school’s budget in 2017. Those cuts were not enough and the school ended up reducing spending by around $53 million in fiscal year 2018.
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