Crowded Dining Halls and Forced Triples: Is UMass Growing Too Fast?

UMass Leadership Doesn’t View Overcrowding as a Problem, But Students Disagree.

The following article appeared originally in the Amherst Wire on November 11, 2025. It is reposted here with permission.

UMass Amherst is a school that prides itself on its quality of life for students. But with a student body that has steadily grown over the past couple of years, along with less undergrads moving off campus due to soaring rent costs, some students feel that there isn’t enough space for them.

Dorms are filled to capacity, with some students being placed in forced triples and other living situations that they say don’t live up to the school’s standards. For example, in 2022, 117 students who transferred into UMass were placed off campus in the EconoLodge Hotel in Hadley as part of overflow measures.

Dining halls, which are one of the school’s main selling points, are now overcrowded during peak hours.

For students, it can be difficult to find seating, and this, combined with the fact that at many points during the day, there are long lines to wait in, makes the dining hall experience less glamorous than advertised, according to some.

Students who spoke to the Wire say crowded dining halls can upend their routine, especially during the week when they have little time in between classes and other activities to spare.

“It’s really difficult, to the point it makes me nervous to go,” Sophie Sohrab, a sophomore living in Sylvan, had this to say of her experiences with UMass’ dining halls: “Me and my friends sometimes even go across campus to eat because those are less crowded.” Even then, she said, they’d still have to “walk around in circles and wait for people to be done eating and then run to the table, before it’s even cleaned.”

Dorm life has also suffered as enrollment balloons. Not only are there problems with off-campus housing, where rental prices are surging and some residents are being pushed out by larger student-focused housing complexes, but students are also struggling to find stable housing for themselves on campus. In the spring semester of 2023, nearly 900 undergraduate students did not receive housing after requesting it, which led to an encampment protest on the campus lawn that April.

Newer housing options, like the Fieldstone student apartments, opened in the fall of 2023, tend to keep lower- to medium-income students away. The apartment complex is a relatively high-end living situation, with rent for a two-bedroom unit coming in at $3,800.

This has led the university to explore other, more affordable options, with the EconoLodge in Hadley, which had previously housed students in emergency situations, now being converted into rooms for rent, with completion expected by 2026.

UMass says they don’t see overcrowding as a major problem on campus.

“We have a consistent enrollment target,” Emily Gest, Vice Chancellor for News and Media Relations, told the Wire, claiming that first-year enrollment has remained steady in the past five years. ”It has been around 5,300 first-year students.” 5,300 is a rough average of what the numbers have been, but there have been shifts because of the pandemic and more students in the following classes to make up for it. “Taking into account in-person and online enrollment, the university’s in-person enrollment is similar to what it was in 2019,” Gest added.

But looking at these numbers in context, even if total enrollment has stayed roughly the same, an increasing number of upperclassmen are still present on campus, whether still frequenting dining halls daily or living on campus, largely because housing is so limited outside of it.

“On-campus housing requests have grown 8.5% since 2018, while headcount has only grown 5.7%,” Gest said. There is an increased demand for on-campus housing, where freshmen are required to live, therefore having priority in assignments. This means that there’s less space for sophomores and upperclassmen who wish to stay on campus.

Off-campus housing, already scarce, is even less accessible after the Olympia Place Apartments fire this past weekend, which displaced over 200 students. The complex was a popular spot for off-campus housing within walking distance of campus, and its loss intensifies the pressure on an already strained housing market in Amherst.

Before the pandemic, it was typical for students to move off campus after their freshman year. But high rents and a desire to have a longer experience with campus life post-COVID have driven more demand for dorm assignments from sophomores and upperclassmen.

Unlike university leadership, the student government does see housing scarcity and overcrowding as an issue. In the spring of 2024, the Student Government Association submitted a proposal to impose an enrollment cap at the school in order to address the overadmittance and pace the school’s growth. UMass reported 4,900 or so new students in the fall of 2021. Just a year later, in 2022, the school had an increase in students coming in, at approximately 5,550. Showing a clear inflation in enrollment, this came after the school’s admissions had inflated after the pandemic, causing the SGA to call out the UMass administration for irresponsibly admitting too many students, claiming that enrollment rates were more than the university could handle with the resources available.

SGA also painted overadmittance as a problem of equity, arguing that “student resources, including, but not limited to, housing, dining halls, common spaces, and mental health resources are overcrowded, preventing students from properly living and learning at this institution.” But with an enrollment cap, the SGA argues that the school could align its recent growth with its promise of giving all students a high-end education and quality of life that is affordable.

Dale Leone, a current Secretary of Finance but then senator and Vice President for UMass’ SGA, summarized the administration’s reaction to the resolution he had a part in proposing: “They basically did not respond directly. I’d say it definitely put pressure on the school because, from what I do know, the UMass administration has done a better job now than before. But I don’t think it’s enough.”

Leone said housing and overcrowding is not something that the SGA is still discussing actively due to the university’s response, but they are committed to giving students all the support they need.

“Personally, I think they should be able to guarantee housing for not just freshmen, but also all sophomores, juniors, and seniors who want it,” he added.

The school may not see overcrowding as a problem, but for thousands of students, including some who have a strong say and direct connections with the administration, it is. As the SGA proposal said, “the UMass Amherst administration should prioritize the current needs of students over any other reason.” But it appears that growth and profit are what UMass is aiming for.