There are too many people at The University of Alabama.
Not the most controversial opinion, I’ll admit. I suspect that the majority of the teeming hordes outside my window share it, which proves that irony is not as dead as people say. As far as opinions go, it’s practically passé, up there with noting that the sky is blue and other football teams are terrible.
But it’s true. There are too many people at this university. One has only to note the despair on the faces of drivers trapped behind endless flowing walls of pedestrians. One need only observe the stupefied stare of a freshman confronted with Fresh Foods at lunch time. The parking situation hardly even needs to be explored, as mention of the subject alone is enough to reduce even the sweetest soul into a spitting ball of rage.
Everywhere there throngs an endless, clogging mass of humanity. The residence halls are overflowing with freshmen, sometimes beyond reasonable capacity. Somerville, that famously placid female residence hall, shall surely no longer be placid now that three women have been crammed within every room. To have seen the annual migration of hopeful girls into Tutwiler is to be reminded of the flight of a million butterflies, though butterflies do not require several carts to move their belongings to Mexico and back.
Some of these people will be soaked up by the greek housing options, of course. Many more will be pushed off campus entirely, flooding out into the off-campus housing around the University. Good luck finding an apartment next year, when this year’s crop of bright young faces have been unceremoniously expelled from the residence halls.
The solution proposed by our administration seems to be to try and build our way out of the problem. Already the bones of a massive new hall are rising beside Presidential, itself previously touted as the answer to some of the housing problems. The Bryce property has been purchased with the intent to install some new halls there as well. Gargantuan greek houses are sprouting like fungus along Old Row. If we’re patient, the administration tells us, the University will figure out how to accommodate all of its students. Plans are in motion. Be patient.
This would be a reasonable and productive explanation, if it weren’t for the University’s compulsive habit of admitting anybody with a pulse and a checkbook. Each freshman class has been larger than the last, a trend that shows no sign of stopping anytime soon. And no matter how many bike racks are erected, no matter how many new residence halls are promised, the root problem remains.
These may sound like the grumblings of an upperclassman unwilling to move to the times. Perhaps, you might think, I have an issue with the flood of out-of-state students. Maybe I just hate freshmen. Maybe I just hate people. None of the first three are true; I remember being a freshman, I myself am an out-of-state student, and I hold no particular hatred for change. But there is clearly a population problem on this campus. The infrastructure groans beneath the weight of a million Sperry-ed feet. The dining halls are picked clean by lunch time and again by dinner. North Korea’s border is more porous than this campus during the day.
The University is, like most large institutions, an organism in its own right. Departments work together like organs, roads twist like veins and people build all of it like cells. But now there are too many people. And there’s a word for unmitigated, unmanaged growth in an organism: cancer.
Letting in fewer people while the University prepares to house them won’t kill Alabama. Continuing this kind of growth, however, probably will.
Asher Elbein is a senior in New College. His column runs biweekly on Thursdays.
