While the final numbers won’t be released until the census date, It is estimated that there are 580 students on Campus.
Some students feel that this is too many.
Tonya Monteer, sophomore from Louisburg, said that the school should match the number of students to the available space, not only in the residence halls, but also with parking.
“I also think that they need to have the OU stickers be a requirement this year,” she said. “Not as something that we’re going to try to make work.”
Monteer said that rules about parking should be relaxed, such as letting students park on the grass.
“If we get a ticket for parking in the street and we get a ticket if we park in the grass, then where are we supposed to park?” she asked.
Olivé Palu, Senior from Olathe, is one that likes the increased number of students.
“At my high school, we had almost 2000 kids,” he said. “Getting more kids here is a good thing to me.”
Palu said that he didn’t notice a big difference except inside the dorms.
Lexy Lauzon, sophomore from St. Louis, MO also said that parking is a big deal. She also said that it was important not to lose the advantages of a small university.
“If you want to have more students but you still want to have that personal one-on-one feel, you either need to hire more staff or you need to make more units of a class,” she said.
Monteer said that the school should raise standards for students enrolling as well.
“We’re not a community college, we can turn them down,” she said. “We just keep accepting people and we’re not ready for them.”
Monteer said that the retention rate has been the highest in a long time.
“Anytime you need to ask returning students to triple up, you know you need to start turning kids down,” she said. “[OU is] bringing in more students than they’re making changes.”
She isn’t the only one that thinks this.
“There are just too many students,” Lauzon said. “They’re expecting this year’s class to retain even more than we did.”
Joseph Erwin, a junior from Fort Worth Texas, mentioned many of the same problems but also said that the lunch lines are long and that the internet connections are too slow from the massive amount of students online.
“The cafeteria should be bigger, there should be more lines or something,” he said. “Internet connection shouldn’t be a problem.”