Last semester, the residents of the Ballard Wing of the Wallace Residence Hall were told that, at spring semester, they would be relocated to the newly renovated Stevenson Wing.
This was due to the deadline of the University of Idaho student housing construction project, with renovations starting with the first two floors of the Theopolis Tower residence hall, and the renovations on the Stevenson Wing. Eventually, all of the wings of Wallace will be fully renovated in this style.
The university promoted this as an upgrade, and in a video tour, the renovated dorms shown in Stevenson are better than the dorms in Ballard. There are no weird smells, showers that function like showers and air conditioning. Unfortunately, those cons of the unrenovated Ballard have been replaced with new, and more frustrating issues, in the renovated Stevenson.
For example, yes, Stevenson does have air conditioning, but the air conditioning is not adjustable currently, and there seems to be no heat. There are also automatic lights that shut off when there seems to be no motion inside of the room. I assume the intent is positive, so that the university can save on energy, but once I sit down in my desk, the lights turn off after 15 minutes.
The decrease in space is also a huge disappointment. The Stevenson dorms were designed to be single room suites, and now they are doubles. This, coupled with the lack of built-in cabinets (which was bolstered as a way for students to have more control over their storage, aka “buy-it-yourself”) and storage, is very frustrating. I personally am taking half of my items home that originally fit in my Ballard room because there is now no space for them. Many people who were curious about the renovated dorm buildings asked to come and see my dorm, and they were just as disappointed with the space as I was.
The dorms also had dings and dents in them when I moved in, and the floors were not swept on the move-in day.
My fellow floormates and I did not know about our relocation until two months into us living in Ballard. Though there was an option to move out of Ballard (which was given to us before we knew that we had to move), many students, including myself, did not want to relocate.
Before we even moved into Stevenson, many students were confused and concerned about the lack of communication given to us by the university. Most of the communication given to me was given a week before we had to set up for the move.
In total, there were four to five emails sent out to students over the course of the fall semester giving specific details about the Stevenson move. The first email that was sent to us was in October of 2025, a month and a half after we settled into Ballard. This email was how many residents found out the move was occurring in the first place.
I believe that I and other Ballard residents deserved more consistent communication from the university regarding our move. The final two emails that we received had the most information in them and they were sent two weeks before the winter break started.
Inside those emails, there was information on how our items could be moved. One option was where we packed up our items and they were delivered to our dorms, and another was leaving our items inside of the dorms and after winter break, we would have to move the items ourselves. I personally chose the first option, thinking that it would save me a lot of time and effort, which it did, but some of my items were lost in the move and brought to me at a later date.
There is also a $330 increase in housing price for students who moved over to Stevenson. Unfortunately, this $330 increase was divided up between both semesters, the first semester being in the unrenovated Ballard, and the second semester in the new Stevenson building. I personally believe that residents are being charged for something that is an inconvenience to them, since we were moved on the university’s schedule. If the university wants to increase the price, it would make more sense to charge a higher price once the students moved into Stevenson, not tacking on the price to the beginning dorms. This division of cost seems suspicious.
I understand the university has a housing issue, but it is very disappointing that the university is mandating that freshman need to stay inside of dorms while there is not enough space for all of the freshman to live. A solution to this problem is not to shove more students into cramped dorms. It is to create a new residence hall or drop the freshman live-on-campus mandate.
It is also frustrating that we as students have these bare minimum expectations and, unless we kick and scream loud enough, our problems will not be solved. It would be in housing’s best interest to refund the $330 upcharge, and to publicly apologize to the students who had to inconvenience themselves throughout their winter break.
The dorms on visual terms look much nicer, but as living space for college students, the Stevenson dorms leave a lot up to the imagination. I hope the university takes these comments and concerns as they move forward in the rest of renovations and take into account that they are not relocating numbers, but people.
Josie is a student at the University of Idaho who works for The Argonaut. However, she was not paid for this article and submitted it to express her opinion on the matter.