By Mekayla Marshall
There is a new residence hall in town, and it will be located on Xavier University of Louisiana’s campus.
After the long-awaited project, it has been announced that a new residence hall will be built for future
XULA students.
“I am happy that we are getting a new residence hall built, but sad because current Xavierites will not be able to enjoy it,” said Mo Koontz, a junior at XULA majoring in political science. “I felt like this should
have been done a long time ago, so students now should not have to be forced to stay in an apartment,” Koontz said.
This new residence hall will help the overcrowding of the current residence halls and house more
students. Although some agree that a new residence hall is great news, others think differently.
There has always been an issue with overcrowding residence halls where some students do not have
housing or have to find apartments off-campus. Some advice to incoming freshmen/transfers, if you are looking to stay on campus, make sure you pay your housing deposit to secure your spot in housing.
The current residence halls are St. Katherine Drexel and St. Michaels, which are first-year students only, and Living Learning Center is a mix of first-year and second-year students. St. Martin de Porres consist of upper-level students with some freshmen.
With the high number of students who attend Xavier University for their prestigious pre-med and
pharmacy programs, housing can get crowded quickly.
The construction of the new residence hall should resolve some of the issues with overcrowding,
especially with the male dormitories. St. Michaels is one of the historical dorms because it housed the
Freedom Riders.
“Building a new dorm will definitely attract more students because there will be more space for
students to reside,” said Amaya Eubanks, a senior at XULA. “A lot of the time, schools will accept more
than they can house, and it can cause some students to not have housing,” Eubanks added.
It is unknown what the new residence hall will be named and whether it will house girls, boys, or both.
Since there is only one all-male residence hall and a coed dorm that still consists of more women, maybe the residence hall will be a newly built male dorm.
“I think the boys will reside in the new residence hall because we get a lot of transfer students,” said
Najah Nicholas, a sophomore bio-premed major at XULA. “They reside in St. Michaels, which is one of
the smaller residential halls, and since Xavier is getting more boys, they need to go somewhere.”
