u/BossDstroyer

Here's a photo that I took a couple months ago of lightning striking Cathy. Hope yinz like it.

My sister is an incoming freshman and she got the housing assignment she wanted, a Loggerhead double suite with one of her friends. However, when she checked her housing portal, there was an asterisk next to the word double. When she reached out to housing, they told her she was in the 9'2"x11' double, which is just the standard single with 2 people forced inside. This leaves each girl with just over 50 square feet of space, the minimum required by North Carolina state law. Disregarding the obvious humanitarian concerns with having two people living in such a small room, when I used the WayBack Machine to see if this was listed before she signed the contract, I found that on May 21 (see image), well after the housing application deadline, the website had only listed one size for a standard double. Now (see other image), they updated it to say 9'2"x11' OR 11'4"x14'6", which is a massive difference: 100.83 sq ft vs 164.33 sq ft. She was obviously upset by this since it meant she had to rethink everything she had planned to bring. The fact that UNCW didn't reach out or give any indication that her room was not standard other than an easily missed marking in the housing portal that she had to ask about would be bad enough if it wasn't for housing's response to an email from my very upset parents asking why they had to pay the double rate for a room that was 2/3 the size. Their argument was that they charged "based on occupancy, not space." By claiming they charged based on occupancy, they are admitting that they changed the classification of her room and are charging the same rate for so much less space. And if they only charged based on occupancy and not space, why charge different prices for a deluxe double or doubles in other buildings? On top of that, in other buildings on campus with "expanded housing," they charge the students less for rooms that were converted. I don't think it would be as big of a deal if they had listed the smaller room size before she applied, but changing it after she had already signed the housing contract seems like bad faith. If UNCW had always intended to use 9'2"×11' rooms as doubles, the website should have reflected that before the housing deadline, when students could still make alternative arrangements. Instead, they waited until after students were contractually committed to on-campus housing. This is literally the definition of fraudulent concealment, since they didn't tell her that was an option until way after she had already signed the contract. The long-and-short of it is that UNCW knowingly screwed over a bunch of students by forcing them to live in a converted single without telling them, providing alternatives, or discounting the price of the room, proving that they care more about money and their enrollment numbers than the welfare of their students.

If anyone has any recommendations on next steps (who to email, things to say, protections in place, etc.), she would be very thankful.